France have won the Six Nations after beating Scotland 35-16 in Paris.
England pushed the championship battle to the final game after earlier destroying Wales with a record 68-14 win in Cardiff.
But Les Bleus sealed victory in front of a home crowd in a packed Stade de France to lift their first title since 2022 and only their second since 2010.
Scotland briefly threatened to spoil the party and were unlucky to go into halftime 16-13 behind after a Tom Jordan try was disallowed.
The match remained tight until France threw on their forward replacements and Scotland’s defence tired under the onslaught.
Yoram Moefana grabbed the bonus-point securing fourth try and the celebrations in Paris began.
France had bounced back emphatically from their defeat away to England on matchday two to crush Ireland and Italy and put themselves in pole position entering the final day.
The hosts only needed a win against Scotland, with both England and Ireland also in with a chance, but only if other results went their way.
Last year’s champions Ireland kept their hopes of retaining the title alive with an unconvincing 22-17 bonus-point win over Italy in the early game in Rome.
A week on from having their Grand Slam dream crushed by a 42-27 drubbing in Dublin at the hands of France, Ireland moved top of the table ahead of the other matches.
But they needed both of their championship rivals to slip up, and England’s 10-try demolition of Wales pushed Ireland back into second place, while France’s win meant they finished the competition in third.
The Prince of Wales, who is the patron of the Welsh Rugby Union and his wife the Princess of Wales, the patron of the Rugby Football Union, cheered on opposing sides from the stands.
England’s emphatic bonus-point victory still left them relying on Scotland to beat the favourites to finish in the top spot.
Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
Vice President JD Vance admitted that Elon Musk has made “mistakes” while carrying out his mass firings of government employees under the Department of Government Efficiency.
“Elon himself has said that sometimes you do something, you make a mistake, and then you undo the mistake,” Vance told NBC News on Friday. “I’m accepting of mistakes.”
“I also think you have to quickly correct those mistakes,” he added, acknowledging that “there are a lot of good people who work in the government—a lot of people who are doing a very good job.”
Vance did not specify what exactly those mistakes were or how they had been corrected.
Vance struck a comparatively mellow tone about the cuts in comparison to Musk, who has alleged widespread fraud and waste as a justification for DOGE’s purge of the federal workforce. In February, Musk waved a chainsaw on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference to symbolize his efforts to scale back the federal government.
Pressed about Musk’s claims, Vance questioned the extent of the fraud that Musk has said is widespread.
“I think some people clearly are collecting a check and not doing a job,” he told NBC. “Now, how many people is that? I don’t know, in a 3 million-strong federal workforce, whether it’s a few thousand or much larger than that.”
Vance’s words also seem to undercut the scathing account President Donald Trump gave of workers last week after the Department of Education cut nearly half its staff.
“I feel very badly, but many of them don’t work at all,” Trump said, referring to the tens of thousands of workers he and Musk have laid off across the government.
”Many of them never showed up to work,” he said, without offering support for the claim.
In his interview, Vance made it clear, however, that he does agree with Trump and Musk’s push in principle.
Kanye West took to X on Saturday to reveal two new songs, including one, “Lonely Roads Still Go To Sunshine,” featuring contributions from Diddy; North West, West’s eldest daughter with Kim Kardashian; and King Combs, Diddy’s son.
TMZ reports that when Kardashian learned of the song’s existence, she sent out cease and desist letters, resulting in an emergency hearing with a mediator and a judge. TMZ’s sources claim that Kanye promised not to release the song.
The song opens with a message from what sounds like Diddy telling West that he appreciates West taking care of his children and reaching out, because nobody has called him or reached out. West responds by telling Diddy, “Absolutely, I love you so much man, you raised me, even when I didn’t know you.” North can be heard later on in the song rapping the bridge, including, “Doing everything I wanted / That’s the key to life /When you see me shining / Then you see the light.”
TMZ also shared screenshots of a now-deleted Kanye tweet showing a conversation between the rapper and Kardashian which, while it appeared to be about North’s appearance on the song, seemed to focus almost entirely on trademarks. West responded by telling Kardashian, “Amend it or I’m going to war. And neither of us will recover from the public fallout. You’re going to have to kill me.”
West followed the two songs, the second of which is appropriately called “World War 3,″ up with posts revealing his new album cover—a red swastika on a black background—and a new logo for his Sunday Service: the Schutzstaffel (SS) logo.
West is currently dealing with divorce rumors surrounding his marriage to second wife Bianca Censori, who he married in 2022. Amidst speculation, he was recently spotted with a Censori look-alike in Los Angeles, just one month after the couple’s controversial stunt that saw West’s wife walk the Grammy Awards red carpet while nearly naked.
A DOCTOR claims Gene Hackman’s wife called him 24 hours after officers said she died – casting more mystery over the couple’s deaths.
Betsy Arakawa was found to have passed on February 11 from a rare rodent disease called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome – a week before her Oscar-winning husband passed.
Betsy Arakawa with one of her german shepherd dogsCredit: Handout
But former emergency care specialist and runner of Cloudberry Health in Santa Fe, Dr Josiah Child, claims that Betsy couldn’t have died on February 11 because “she called my clinic on February 12”.
He told the Mail that Betsy called him a couple of weeks before her death to ask about getting an echocardiogram [heart scan] for her husband.
Child said Bets was not a patient of his, but one of his patients had recommended Cloudberry to her.
He said: “She made an appointment for herself for February 12. It was for something unrelated to anything respiratory.”
And just two days before she was due to see him, Betsy canceled her appointment because her husband wasn’t well, Dr Child claims.
“The appointment wasn’t for anything related to hantavirus. We tried calling her a couple of times with no reply.”
Hantavirus spreads when exposed to rodents’ urine, droppings, and saliva, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr Child has raised questions over her cause of death, linking to the mysterious call to the doctor’s office and how she sounded on the phone.
Child said he is not a hantavirus expert but most patients who have that diagnosis die in hospital.
He said: “It is surprising that Mrs Hackman spoke to my office on the phone on February 10 and again on February 12 and didn’t appear in respiratory distress.”
But Dr Child isn’t the only one confused over Betsy’s hantavirus diagnosis.
Betsy’s Oscar-winning husband Hackman, who was suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s, was alone in the house for days following his wife’s death.
It is possible that he did not know of Betsy’s body in the bathroom.
He died on February 18 when the last signal from the actor’s pacemaker was recorded.
Gene Hackman’s family’s full statement
Gene Hackman’s family has spoken out on the actor’s death after he was found dead with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, in their Santa Fe home.
Hackman’s daughters, Elizabeth and Leslie, and his granddaughter, Annie, released the statement.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our father, Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy,” Elizabeth, Leslie, and Annie Hackman said.
“He was loved and admired by millions around the world for his brilliant acting career, but to us he was always just Dad and Grandpa.
“We will miss him sorely and are devastated by the loss.”
The medical examiner ruled his cause of death as hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiac disease and noted that his Alzheimer’s will have played a “significant” role in his death.
He tested negative for hantavirus, Chief Medical Investigator Dr. Heather Jarrell revealed.
Neither body was found until February 26 when a neighborhood caretaker called 911 after finding them unresponsive at the property.
YOUTUBER P2istheName has been found dead in a mailroom at the age of 26 – as pals pay touching tributes to the “kind creator”.
The star, whose real name was Philip Enewally, was discovered on Friday, according the Los Angeles County Coroner.
The star was known for gaming videos, vlogs and skits
A cause of death has not yet been revealed, as investigations continue into the shock event.
The Youtuber’s mom confirmed her son’s passing to TMZ – and requested privacy on behalf of the family.
She also encouraged fans to visit his channel, which has around four million subscribers, to honour his memory.
Tributes have flooded in for the star, who was known for his gaming videos, comedy skits and vlogs.
Taking to Instagram, fellow YouTuber Coletheman wrote: “My good friend @P2istheName has passed away… wow.
“I’m honestly at a loss for words. He was always so kind to me and gave me so much content creation advice.
“May he rest in peace. This breaks my heart.”
Other fans shared their support, with one writing: “This man was my childhood, I still can’t believe it’s is real. May he rest in peace.”
Another wrote: “Never been touched by a celebrity’s death like this one.”
P2istheName lasted posted two weeks ago, and had previously spoken of plans to move to Atlanta from his hometown of LA.
He rose to fame with videos of himself playing NBA 2K and Fortnite, before expanding to general explainers of popular video games, dubbed “Let’s Plays”.
He also had his own streetwear brand DontMindUs.
Aside from gaming, P2istheName gave fans a glimpse into his personal life with vlogs showing “a day in the life of a young black millionaire” in L.A.
In his most recent Instagram post on February 19, he was seen loading DontMindUs parcels into a van – while posing in a red and black jersey from the brand.
In another slide in the same post, he appeared to be in a mailroom or shipping facility, surrounded by inventory.
THIS is the concerning moment missing Sudiksha Konanki appears to be sick at a bar shortly before vanishing from her holiday resort.
The 20-year-old student was last seen on March 6, in the Dominican Republic with sources close to the police now claiming the last person to see her has changed his official story several times.
The concerning moment missing Sudiksha Konanki is seen being sick at a barCredit: X/CDN
New CCTV footage, obtained by CDN TV, from inside a bar at the Riu Republica resort in Punta Cana shows the young woman hanging out with a group of people.
The University of Pittsburgh student can be seen leaving her drink at a table before going up to a grassy area and appearing to vomit, according to local reports.
The clip is said to have been taken at around 4:05am.
An unknown woman can be seen helping Konanki as she quickly walks back towards the bar area.
The video also shows American man Joshua Riibe, 24, who claims the pair shared a kiss on the beach before Konanki went missing.
Riibe is considered to be the last person to have seen the student after separate CCTV showed them together.
The Iowa resident, who has been interviewed by cops but not named as a suspect in this case, is believed to be in the background of the bar CCTV.
He is stood with two men and also appears to be sick in the short clip.
Riibe and Konanki were stood only around 10ft apart in the footage but did not communicate at any point with each other.
As police continue to look for any signs of Konanki, a number of details have emerged.
Konanki was last seen in the early hours of March 6 near to the Punta Cana resort where she and Riibe were both staying.
The final sighting of her was when surveillance cameras captured five women and one man heading towards the beach at around 4:55am.
This is the same beach where Riibe told cops he kissed Konanki shortly after they first met, according to a transcript of his interview from Noticias SIN.
Riibe, a senior at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, told police: “We were in waist-deep water. We talked and kissed a bit.”
He also claimed he saved Konanki from drowning while in the water while explaining he was previously a lifeguard.
Riibe said: “It took me a long time to get her out. It was difficult.”
He told cops he was able to pull Konanki until she was “knee-deep and walking at an angle out of the water”.
The senior said he called out to ask if the student was okay but didn’t hear a response before he was sick on the beach.
He added: “After vomiting, I looked around. I didn’t see anyone. I thought she had grabbed her things and left.”
Riibe then claimed he passed out on a beach chair.
Shirtless and shoeless he was seen leaving the beach and returning to the resort at around 8:55am the morning after.
A police source close to the investigation has now claimed he gave differing accounts to police over the course of four meetings, according to a People report.
It is still unclear which elements were changed.
Timeline of Sudiskha Konanki’s disappearance
SUDISHKA Konanki, 20, disappeared during a spring break trip to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.
Here’s a timeline of her last known movements:
On March 6 at 3 am, Konanki and her five friends were seen dancing at Riu Republica Resort’s disco
At around 4 am, surveillance captured the group leaving the resort with Joshua Steven Riibe, a 24-year-old from Iowa who they met on the trip
At around 5:50 am, Konanki’s friends left the beach and headed home, but the now-missing student and Ribe stayed
Riibe told cops that he passed out drunk on the beach at some point after that, and when he woke up, Konanki was gone
Konanki was reported missing at 4 pm later that evening by her friends
He is also said to have refused to answer eight questions from local cops, including whether Konanki could swim and what he told his friends.
To these questions he told authorities, “My lawyers advise me not to answer that question and I follow their advice.”
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office told The U.S. Sun they consider Riibe a person of interest due to him being with Konanki.
They stressed he wasn’t a suspect though as the sheriff’s official added: “We want to be clean, this is not a criminal case, it is a missing persons case.
“Person of interest does not mean suspect. It’s still an active investigation.”
It comes as the Dominican Republic’s national police said it believed Konanki may have drowned in the ocean.
FURIOUS Kim Jong-un could send his own officials to face the firing squad for their “reckless” behaviour.
Iron-fist ruler Kim has wiped one of North Korea’s party committees off the map after being left outraged by their antics.
Kim Jong-un aims a weapon as he visits the training base of the special operations armed force of North Korea’s armyCredit: Reuters
Dozens of party officials were involved in an embarrassing “drinking spree” that ended in a “major incident” at Ryonggang Hot Springs resort in Onchon county.
Insiders believe this could have involved physical fights, abuse towards staff, cavorting with mistresses and trashing the premises
Michael Madden, director of NK Leadership Watch, told The Sun: “North Korean culture has no qualms about alcohol consumption.
“This was not a case of people getting a tad too tipsy or singing too loudly.
“Whatever happened, it was most certainly a stag party atmosphere.
“This involved about 40 officials under a county party committee.
“Whatever happened was so egregious they decommissioned the county party committee.
“That means some pretty hard individuals tied to Kim will directly manage the Onchon area’s affairs for the time being and the county party committee literally wiped off the map”.
Kim is now desperately trying to clamp down on unruly government officials in his Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) after a series of incidents.
Fuming Kim has demanded his cronies stop abusing their power to clean up their act amid fears it could spell bad news for his party’s future.
His puppet state newspaper Rodung Sinmun recently used its front page to decry bad behaviour and insist on compliance with party discipline.
It warned that disobedience “will cause losses to the party and leave a stain on one’s own political life”.
Kim has forced some local and provincial government officials to work without pay for up to six months as punishment.
But the despot’s wrath could go a lot further – and end in death for the worst offenders.
Mr Madden added: “There were other ruling party meetings at which discipline and bad behaviour were addressed.
“Some local and provincial government officials were sentenced to work without pay for three-to-six-month periods.
“Some of these people will be demoted and/or expelled from the WPK.
“These party meetings, the central Secretariat meeting Kim presided over, and these local level meetings are, in some cases, just the beginning of the process.
“Some of these incidents will be referred to the police or the State Security Department (NK secret police) for further investigation.
“In some of the more egregious cases people will be incarcerated or sent to isolated areas with their family members.
“There is also certainly a high probability that a couple of the most flagrant offenders will be sent to the firing squad and executed.”
North Korea’s implementation of the death penalty has long been condemned by human rights groups.
The nation’s hermetic state means the true number of executions isn’t clear – but defectors have given gruesome accounts.
Murder, rape, drug smuggling, treason, political dissent, piracy, and consumption of media not approved by the government are some of the offences the death penalty is handed down for.
Last year, North Korea admitted carrying out public executions in a rare admission of its treatment of prisoners.
Executions were ordered for 30 officials in September after Kim accused them of failing to prevent flooding and landslides that killed 1,000 people.
Protesters marching in Nuuk held signs such as ‘We are not for sale!’Image: Christian Klindt Soelbeck/REUTERS
Hundreds of Greenlanders took to the streets on Saturday to protest against US President Donald Trump’s stated goal of taking control of their island.
Video footage showed crowds gathered in the capital, Nuuk, waving Greenland’s flag and holding signs with messages such as “Respect Greenland’s sovereignty,” “We are not for sale” and “Make America Go Away” — a play on Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”
Rallies were also taking place in other towns on the island.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen, leader of the center-right Demokraatit party that won this week’s parliamentary election, was joined by outgoing Prime Minister Mute B. Egede to lead protesters toward the US consulate on Nuuk’s outskirts.
“We want to be ourselves, and our autonomy and freedom will never be put up for debate,” Nielsen told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation during the rally.
“There is not the slightest chance that I will talk to Trump about Greenland becoming part of the US. Greenland will be Greenland,” he said.
Speaking to Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq on Saturday, Egede called the US president’s approach “completely unacceptable.”
What has Trump said about Greenland?
Over the past few months, Trump has repeatedly voiced his interest in taking control of Greenland.
The US president raised the idea again on Thursday during a meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte at the White House.
When asked by a reporter about a possible annexation, Trump said: “I think it will happen.”
He went on to say that the territory was fundamental to US national security, stressing that the US already has military bases there.
The strategically important Arctic island is home to just 57,000 inhabitants and is a self-governing territory of Denmark.
What has Greenland’s response been?
Lawmakers in Greenland have vehemently opposed Trump’s plans to make the island part of the US.
On Friday, the leaders of the five parties in Greenland’s parliament issued a joint statement rejecting Trump’s comments.
A sticker with a message reading, “15.03. See you in Belgrade,” is seen on a tractor parked near the Serbian presidency building and the National Assembly in Belgrade [Andrej Isakovic/AFP]Serbian anticorruption protesters, riot police and supporters of President Aleksandar Vucic have faced off without major incident in central Belgrade as tens of thousands of people gathered for the biggest antigovernment rally in years.
At least 107,000 people turned out in Belgrade on Saturday, the interior minister reported.
Near-daily student protests began in December after the deaths of 15 people when a roof at a railway station collapsed on November 1 in the northern city of Novi Sad, which critics blame on corruption under Vucic.
Sporadic clashes occurred overnight before Saturday’s rally, in front of the National Assembly, from which protesters were to march to Slavija Square. Police deployed hundreds of officers in full riot gear in and around Pionirski Park and across the street.
Thousands of veterans from elite military brigades in maroon berets and bikers who support the students also stood for 15 minutes of silence beginning at 11:52am (10:52 GMT) to honour the victims of the Novi Sad tragedy at the time of the roof collapse.
Some protesters carried banners that read, “He’s Finished,” referring to Vucic. Others chanted, “Pump it up,” a slogan adopted during the four months of student-led protests.
“We came for justice. I hope that after this protest, things will change,” Milica Stojanovic, a biology student in Belgrade, told the AFP news agency before the demonstration.
While Saturday’s gathering is expected to be largely peaceful, on Friday night in the Zarkovo suburb, a car rammed a column of protesters, injuring three people, and police said they apprehended the driver.
In central Belgrade, a student and a university lecturer were injured in an attack by a group of men early on Saturday, police said.
Three people were also detained after an overnight attack on tractors stationed around Pionirski Park, they said.
In statements issued on social media on Saturday, students urged those attending the rally to act “in a calm and responsible manner”.
“The purpose of this movement is not an incursion into institutions, nor to attack those who do not think as we do,” one statement read. “This movement must not be misused.”
In a bid to avert tensions, students also said they had moved a stage at the centre of the planned protest from the front of the National Assembly building to Slavija Square, about 1km (0.6 miles) away.
So far, Serbian prosecutors have charged at least 13 people over the Novi Sad collapse, and the government has announced an anticorruption campaign. Prime Minister Milos Vucevic and two ministers have also resigned.
But pressure has been mounting in the days leading up to Saturday’s rally.
Government-backed media have broadcast increasingly harsh accusations, saying the students are planning to launch a “coup”. Earlier, Vucic himself accused the demonstrators of organising “large-scale violence”.
Vucic has warned of a “final” showdown on Saturday while some student protesters said they would continue to rally until their demands for greater accountability are met.
On Friday, Vucic took to the airwaves with a defiant message to demonstrators, promising to not back down in the face of mass protests.
Israel has carried out near-daily air strikes in Gaza since early March AFP
Gaza’s civil defence agency said nine people including journalists were killed in Israeli strikes on Saturday, attacks which could further endanger the fragile truce in the Palestinian territory.
Following the reported strikes, the deadliest since the ceasefire took hold on January 19, Hamas accused Israel of a “blatant violation” of the truce which largely halted more than 15 months of fighting.
The first phase of the truce ended on March 1 without agreement on the next steps, but both Israel and Hamas have refrained from returning to all-out war.
A senior Hamas official said on Tuesday fresh talks had begun in Doha, with Israel also sending negotiators.
On Saturday, Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP that “nine martyrs have been transferred (to hospital), including several journalists and a number of workers from the Al-Khair Charitable Organisation”.
He said the killings were “as a result of the occupation (Israel) targeting a vehicle with a drone in the town of Beit Lahia, coinciding with artillery shelling on the same area”.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said “nine martyrs and several injured, including critical cases” were taken to the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it hit “two terrorists… operating a drone that posed a threat to IDF troops in the area of Beit Lahia”.
“Later, a number of additional terrorists collected the drone operating equipment and entered a vehicle. The IDF struck the terrorists,” it added.
Israel has carried out near-daily air strikes in Gaza since early March, often targeting what the military said were militants planting explosive devices.
“The occupation has committed a horrific massacre in the northern Gaza Strip by targeting a group of journalists and humanitarian workers, in a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement.
A separate Hamas statement said the attack was “a dangerous escalation”, adding that it “reaffirms (Israel’s) intent to backtrack on the ceasefire agreement and intentionally obstruct any opportunity to complete the agreement and carry out the prisoner swap”.
During the truce’s initial six-week phase, militants released 33 hostages, including eight who were deceased, in exchange for about 1,800 Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons.
Hamas said Saturday that “the ball is in Israel’s court” after offering to release an Israeli-US hostage and return the bodies of four others as part of the truce talks.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said that among the nine killed were at least three photo journalists, one a drone photography specialist, and a driver.
It said two of the photographers worked for the Oman-based Ayn television channel.
Two members of the Al-Khair charitable organisation were killed, including a spokesperson, the civil defence agency said.
“This heinous crime comes in the context of the systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists, who pay with their lives to convey the truth and expose the crimes of the occupation to the world,” a Palestinian Journalists Syndicate statement said.
“The continuation of these brutal attacks against journalists constitutes a war crime and a blatant violation of international laws, especially the Geneva Convention, which guarantees the protection of journalists during conflicts.”
The director of Hamas-affiliated media in Gaza, Ismail Thawabteh, told AFP that local photo journalists were killed while “using a drone to capture images of a Ramadan dining table in Beit Lahia”.
He said they were “directly targeted by the occupation in two air strikes, despite their work being clear”.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said in February that a total of 85 journalists had died in the Israeli-Hamas war, “all at the hands of the Israeli military”, adding that 82 of them were Palestinians.
In November, Reporters without Borders said that more than 140 journalists had been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the war.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, while Israel’s military retaliation in Gaza killed more than 48,543, according to figures from the two sides.
Violent tornadoes ripped through parts of the U.S., wiping out schools and toppling semitractor-trailers in several states, part of a monster storm that has killed at least 32 people as more severe weather was expected late Saturday.
The number of fatalities increased after the Kansas Highway Patrol reported eight people died in a highway pileup caused by a dust storm in Sherman County on Friday. At least 50 vehicles were involved.
In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves announced that six people died in three counties and three more people were missing. There were 29 injuries across the state, he added in a nighttime post on the social platform X.
Missouri recorded more fatalities than any other state as scattered twisters overnight killed at least 12, authorities said. The deaths included a man whose home was ripped apart by a tornado.
“It was unrecognizable as a home. Just a debris field,” said Coroner Jim Akers of Butler County, describing the scene that confronted rescuers. “The floor was upside down. We were walking on walls.”
Dakota Henderson said he and others rescuing people trapped in their homes Friday night found five bodies scattered in the debris outside what remained of his aunt’s house in hard-hit Wayne County, Missouri.
“It was a very rough deal last night,” he said the following day, surrounded by uprooted trees and splintered homes. “It’s really disturbing for what happened to the people, the casualties last night.”
Henderson said they rescued his aunt from a bedroom that was the only one left standing, taking her out through a window. They also carried out a man who had a broken arm and leg.
Officials in Arkansas said three people died in Independence County and 29 others were injured across eight counties.
“We have teams out surveying the damage from last night’s tornadoes and have first responders on the ground to assist,” Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on X.
She, Reeves and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared states of emergency. Kemp said he was doing so in anticipation of severe weather moving in later in the day.
On Friday, meanwhile, authorities said three people were killed in car crashes during a dust storm in Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle.
Extreme weather encompasses a zone of 100 million people
The deaths came as the massive storm system unleashed winds that triggered deadly dust storms and fanned more than 100 wildfires.
Extreme weather conditions were forecast to affect an area that is home to more than 100 million people. Winds gusting up to 80 mph (130 kph) were predicted from the Canadian border to Texas, threatening blizzard conditions in colder northern areas and wildfire risk in warmer, drier places to the south.
The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for parts of far western Minnesota and far eastern South Dakota starting early Saturday. Snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches (7.6 to 15.2 centimeters) were expected, with up to a foot (30 centimeters) possible.
Winds gusting to 60 mph (97 kph) were expected to cause whiteout conditions.
Evacuations were ordered in some Oklahoma communities as more than 130 fires were reported across the state, and nearly 300 homes were damaged or destroyed. Gov. Kevin Stitt said at a Saturday news conference that some 266 square miles (689 square kilometers) burned in the state.
The State Patrol said winds were so strong that they toppled several tractor-trailers.
Experts said it’s not unusual to see such weather extremes in March.
Tornadoes hit amid storm outbreak
Significant tornadoes continued to hit Saturday, with the region at highest risk stretching from from eastern Louisiana and Mississippi through Alabama, western Georgia and the Florida panhandle, the Storm Prediction Center said.
Bailey Dillon, 24, and her fiance, Caleb Barnes, watched a massive twister from their front porch in Tylertown, Mississippi, away as it struck an area about half a mile (0.8 km) near Paradise Ranch RV Park.
They drove over afterward to see if anyone needed help and recorded video of snapped trees, leveled buildings and overturned vehicles.
“The amount of damage was catastrophic,” Dillon said. “It was a large amount of cabins, RVs, campers that were just flipped over — everything was destroyed.”
Paradise Ranch said via Facebook that all staff and guests were safe and accounted for, but Dillon said the damage extended beyond the RV park itself.
“Homes and everything were destroyed all around it,” she said. “Schools and buildings are just completely gone.”
Some imagery from the extreme weather went viral online.
Tad Peters and his father, Richard Peters, had pulled over to fuel up their pickup truck in Rolla, Missouri, on Friday night when they heard tornado sirens and saw other motorists fleeing the interstate to park.
In recent years, the 3D printing boom has shown us that anything is possible. From toys and tools to medical devices, you can basically print anything—even 2,000-square-foot homes.
Hello, Vulcan. At the Wolf’s Ranch community in Georgetown, a city about 30 minutes away from the Texas capital, most of the home builders aren’t human. In fact, they’re actually robots—3D-printing robots, to be exact. One of them, the Vulcan, is more than 45 feet wide and weighs 4.75 tons.
It makes sense. The Vulcan isn’t building small-scale projects, but rather 3D printing homes. According to Reuters, the Vulcan takes a base mix of concrete powder, water, and sand and prints out a home through its nozzle as if it were toothpaste.
“It brings a lot of efficiency to the trade market,” Conner Jenkins, a senior project manager at Icon, the company behind the Vulcan, said. “So, where there were maybe five different crews coming in to build a wall system, we now have one crew and one robot.”
The world’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood. Icon is an AI and robotics company that uses 3D printing to build homes quickly and at a lower cost. Two years ago, Icon partnered with Lennar, the second-largest homebuilder in the country, to construct 100 3D-printed homes. The project, Wolf’s Ranch, is now the world’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood.
While the initial costs to build the community were slightly higher than expected, Lennar says it’s seen its costs decrease dramatically. Unlike human workers, Icon’s machines operate 24 hours a day. Each printer can do the work of more than 12 construction workers.
By its second year of construction at Wolf’s Ranch, Icon was using 11 machines and printing out two homes per week.
“We’ve seen our costs go down by half. We’ve seen our cycle time go down by half,” Stuart Miller, chairman and co-CEO of Lennar, told CNBC. “This is significant improvement in evolving a housing market that has the ability to change over time and being more adaptable and more functional in providing affordable and attainable housing for a broader swath of the market.”
What’s a 3D-printed home like? Although the homes at Wolf’s Ranch were made differently, they’re just like any other home, with a few differences. First off, all the walls have rounded edges because it’s simply how the printers work with concrete. It’s also important to recall that like other 3D printers, the Vulcan works by printing layers. As a result, the texture on the walls resembles wide corduroy. The foundation and the metal roofs on the homes are installed through traditional means.
Interestingly, the roofs on the homes are solar-powered via roofs made of metal, which include photovoltaic panels. Icon claims the roof is fire-resistant and that the materials used to make the walls are resistant to water, mold, and termites.
Red alerts for flooding and landslides were issued for parts of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna
There has been flooding and landslides in parts of northern Italy as red alerts cover cities including Florence and Pisa.
Torrential rain prompted the alerts for parts of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, with heavy and persistent rainfall expected into the afternoon on Friday.
Tuscany’s president said local rescue and health services were on high alert and advised residents to exercise “the utmost attention and caution”.
Almost a month’s worth of rain fell in Florence on Friday morning while landslides and mudslides were reported in Bologna, where some residents were evacuated on Thursday evening ahead of heavy rain overnight.
No casualties have so far been reported, and the city said the worst of the flooding had passed by mid-morning on Friday.
A family of four was rescued from a landslide in Badia Prataglia, Tuscany on Thursday evening, according to local media.
The national fire brigade said it had received dozens of calls after the Rimaggio flooded and flowed through the Sesto Fiorentino area on Florence’s northern outskirts.
In Pisa, flood defences were being erected along the Arno river as local authorities warned it had surpassed the first flood-risk level.
Roads were also affected by flooding and fallen trees, with residents in Florence advised against all travel after the A1 motorway was partially closed.
Schools were shut in more than 60 municipalities in Tuscany, local media reported, as were several campuses of the University of Florence.
Florence has seen more than double its average March rainfall of 61mm in the past three days.
It saw more than 53mm of rain in just six hours on Friday morning, after a further 36mm had fallen overnight.
The red weather alerts – indicating serious risk of extreme and widespread flooding – were set to continue throughout the day.
Further heavy rain and thunderstorms are expected to move across the northern half of Italy into Saturday, before drier weather begins to move in.
An area of high pressure in the north-east Atlantic has in recent days blocked the path of low pressure systems which normally pass to the north-west of the UK, sending them through the Mediterranean instead.
Some rivers in Emilia-Romagna were already swollen after previous downpours.
More than 1,000 people were evacuated from their homes in the north-eastern region in September 2024 after it was battered by Storm Boris.
The previous year, 13 people died in the region after six months’ worth of rainfall fell in a day and a half. Twenty rivers burst their banks and there were some 280 landslides.
Sophie models for Snag and gets positive and negative comments about her weight
The boss of online clothing brand Snag has told the BBC it gets more than 100 complaints a day that the models in its adverts are “too fat”.
Chief executive Brigitte Read says models of her size 4-38 clothing are frequently the target of “hateful” posts about their weight.
The brand was cited in an online debate over whether adverts showing “unhealthily fat” models should be banned after a Next advert, in which a model appeared “unhealthily thin”, was banned.
The UK’s advertising watchdog says it has banned ads using models who appear unhealthily underweight rather than overweight due to society’s aspiration towards thinness.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 61 complaints about models’ weight in 2024, with the vast majority being about models who appeared to be too thin.
But it only had grounds to investigate eight complaints and none were about Snag.
Catherine Thom read the BBC report about the Next advert ban and got in touch to say she found it “hypocritical to ban adverts where models appear too thin for being socially irresponsible, however when models are clearly obese we’re saying it’s body positivity”.
The 36-year-old from Edinburgh was one of several people who contacted the BBC with this view, while a Reddit thread had more than 1,000 comments with many along the same theme.
Mrs Thom says she was “bombarded with images of obese girls in tights” after buying from Snag when she was pregnant.
“I see Snag tights plastering these morbidly obese people all over social media,” she says.
“How is that allowed when the photo of the Next model isn’t? There should be fairness, not politically correct body positivity. Adverts normalising an unhealthy weight, be it obese or severely underweight, are equally as harmful.”
‘Fat phobia’
But Snag founder Ms Read says: “Shaming fat people does not help them to lose weight and actually it really impacts mental health and therefore their physical health.”
She thinks the idea of banning adverts showing models with bigger bodies is a symptom of society’s “fat phobia”.
Of her 100 staff, 12 are dedicated “just to remove negative comments and big up those promoting body positivity”.
“Fat people exist, they’re equally as valid as thin people, they buy clothes and they need to see what they look like on people that look like them,” she says.
“You are not worth less the bigger you are. Models of all sizes, shapes, ethnicities and abilities are valid and should be represented.”
Sophie Scott is a 27-year-old salon owner from Lossiemouth in Scotland who has modelled for Snag, and received positive and negative comments about her size on social media.
“I get either ‘you’re so beautiful’ or ‘you need to lose weight’. When I started modelling I was a size 30. Having lost weight since then I’m still on the receiving end of hate comments because it will never be enough for some people.”
Sophie is used to online comments telling her she is “unhealthy”, but says, “fitness is not measured by the way you look. They are making assumptions, they don’t know me or my activity levels.
“People say ‘you’re glorifying obesity’ but I don’t think anyone is looking at me and saying ‘I want to look like that’. Perhaps some people are looking at me and saying ‘she has a similar body type to me’.
“When I get a message from someone saying ‘we are the same size and you’ve inspired me to wear what I want’, it takes away from every hate comment I get.
“If I’ve helped one person accept their body then the hate comments don’t really bother me.”
Taiwanese president Lai said that China was “taking advantage of Taiwan’s freedom” to subvert the island’s authorities
In some of his strongest rhetoric yet amid worsening cross-strait ties, Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te has labelled China a “foreign hostile force”.
He said Taiwan had “no choice but to take even more proactive measures” as a result, as he announced a raft of new national security measures, including reinstating a military court system and tightening the residency criteria for those from China, Hong Kong and Macau.
In response to Lai’s remarks, Chinese authorities called him a “destroyer of cross-straits peace” and a “creator of crisis”.
China claims the self-ruled Taiwan as its territory but Taiwan sees itself as distinct from the Chinese mainland.
China was quick to respond to Lai’s statement, with China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Chen Binhua said China would have “no choice but to take decisive measures… [if] ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces dare to cross the red line”.
“Those who play with fire will surely be burned.”
This is not the first time Lai, whose Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is seen as pro-independence, has incurred Beijing’s wrath. He was previously labelled a “troublemaker” ahead of the polls, and Chinese state media even suggested he should be prosecuted for secession.
Speaking to reporters after a high-level national security meeting on Thursday, Lai also warned of China’s growing espionage efforts.
President Lai said China had “taken advantage of Taiwan’s freedom” to recruit different members of society, including current and former armed force members, organised crime groups and the media to “divide, destroy and subvert us from within”.
Taiwanese authorities charged 64 people with spying for China last year – a three-fold increase from 2021 – Lai claimed, adding that the majority of them were current or former military officials.
To counter China’s attempts to infiltrate and spy on the military, Lai said he planned to restore the military court system to “allow military judges to return to the frontline… to handle criminal cases involving active-duty military personnel”.
Taiwan had in 2013 abolished the military court system after it came under fire for its opaque handling of the death of an army conscript.
Lai also called on authorities to “provide entertainers with guidelines on conduct while working in China”, adding that this would prevent China from pressuring stars to behave in ways that “endanger national dignity”.
The CDU/CSU bloc and the SPD have reached an agreement with the Greens on a massive increase in government borrowing.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz (center) announced the agreement on debt reform by saying “Germany is back.”Image: Michael Kappeler/dpa/picture alliance
The conservative CDU/CSU bloc of German election winner Friedrich Merz and the Social Democrats (SPD) have agreed in principle with the Greens on plans for a massive increase in state borrowing ahead of a parliamentary vote next week.
The debt reform plan, put forward jointly by the conservatives and the SPD, would exempt defense spending from the country’s constitutionally enshrined debt brake and create a special €500 billion ($545 billion) fund for infrastructure investment.
The compromise includes the allocation of €100 billion for the climate and economic transformation fund.
Support from the Greens means Merz should get the two-thirds parliamentary majority the planned constitutional amendments require in a vote scheduled for next week.
Merz, whose conservative bloc is in negotiations with the SPD to form a new government following last month’s elections, wants to secure the funds before a new parliament convenes on March 25 — at which point the CDU/CSU tie up wtih the SPD and Greens would no longer have the majority necessary to pass the measure.
What did German politicians say?
“Germany is back,” said Merz, announcing the agreement on debt reform.
“It is a clear message to our partners and friends, but also to our opponents, to the enemies of our freedom: we are capable of defending ourselves and we are now fully prepared to defend ourselves,” he said.
Merz also said he expects the country to release €3 billion ($3.27 billion) in military aid to Ukraine once the upper house passes the debt reform.
“There will be no shortage of financial resources to defend freedom and peace on our continent,” Merz stressed. “Germany is making its major contribution to the defense of freedom and peace in Europe.”
Meanwhile, Social Democrat co-leader Lars Klingbeil said a major government borrowing and investment push was a “powerful boost” for Europe’s largest economy.
“We have laid the foundation for Germany to get back on its feet and protect itself,” Klingbeil said after his SPD agreed with conservatives and Greens on the historic debt package.
Green parliamentary group leader Katharina Dröge said the €100 billion, which must be spent on new measures rather than to fill budgetary holes, “will make a difference” as the money would be “channelled in the right direction.” Though the Green will not be part of the next government, she said negotiations to reach Friday’s compromise would allow ministers in the future government to “do the right thing.”
Presenters Annita McVeigh, Karin Giannone, Kasia Madera and Martine Croxall launched an employment tribunal against the BBC, but it is understood a settlement has been reached with no admission of liability and a three-week tribunal to hear the presenters’ claims will now not go ahead.
Annita McVeigh, Martine Croxall, Karin Giannone and Kasia Madera (L-R). Pic: PA
The BBC has agreed a settlement with four of its female news presenters over employment tribunal claims including age and sex discrimination, Sky News understands.
Presenters Annita McVeigh, Karin Giannone, Kasia Madera and Martine Croxall launched an employment tribunal against the BBC, which was due to start next week.
Ms McVeigh, Ms Croxall and Ms Madera alleged discrimination on the grounds of age, sex, being a union member and wages, while Ms Giannone alleged discrimination based on age, sex and wages.
It is understood the settlement has been reached with no admission of liability, and a three-week tribunal to hear the presenters’ claims will now not go ahead.
In a statement, the presenters said: “We can confirm that we have reached a resolution with BBC management that avoids the need for a tribunal hearing in respect of our employment-related claims.
“A protracted process lasting almost three years is now over. We’ve been deeply moved by the support we’ve received.
“We look forward to contributing further to the success of BBC News, especially to live programming and the growing streaming services that are so important to our audiences.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “After careful consideration we have a reached a resolution which brings to an end protracted legal proceedings with four members of staff and avoids further costs for the BBC.
“In doing so we have not accepted any liability or any of the arguments made against the BBC. We are simply bringing to a close all of the actions brought against us so that all involved can move forward.
“The BBC successfully launched a single BBC News channel in 2023, bringing the best live and breaking news on TV and online both here and around the world.
“We welcome this opportunity to now look to the future, and to work together on delivering for our audiences – which is our first priority.”
President Donald Trump has made repeated threats to make the US neighbour to the north its 51st state.
Mark Carney has been formally sworn in as the new prime minister of Canada, following the resignation of predecessor Justin Trudeau.
Mr Carney, a former governor of both the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, will try to steer his country through a trade war brought by Donald Trump.
Mr Trump has also made repeated threats to make the US neighbour to the north its 51st state.
Speaking at a news conference after the swearing-in ceremony in Ottawa, Mr Carney said such talk was “crazy” and Canada will “never ever be part of the US”.
The American president has slapped 25% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium and is threatening sweeping tariffs on all Canadian products from 2 April.
Mark Carney arrives before being sworn in as Canada’s 24th prime minister REUTERS/Patrick Doyle
Mr Carney has already said he is ready to meet Mr Trump if he shows “respect for Canadian sovereignty” and is willing to take “a common approach, a much more comprehensive approach for trade”.
The prime minister also said he would keep in place retaliatory tariffs on US goods until the US showed Canada some respect.
Canada, which is the biggest foreign supplier of steel and aluminum to the US, this week announced 25% retaliatory tariffs on those metals along with computers, sports equipment and other products worth $20bn in total.
Canada already imposed tariffs on 4 March worth a similar amount on US goods in response to broader tariffs by Mr Trump.
Mr Carney also said he respects what Mr Trump is looking to accomplish and hopes to have a call with the president.
In the presence of governor general Mary Simon, the personal representative of King Charles, who is Canada’s head of state, the new prime minister took the oath of office.
He plans to visit France and the UK, as Canada seeks to shore up alliances in Europe, with its relations with the US sinking to unprecedented lows.
Sam Jones says she is “truly sorry” for snatching a baby wombat from its distressed mother – and has left Australia.
The American influencer who snatched a baby wombat from its distressed mother has said “thousands threatened” her life, and that she is “truly sorry” in an Instagram post.
Sam Jones, who describes herself as an “outdoor enthusiast and hunter”, wrote a lengthy statement on social media, saying she was “extremely concerned” about the wombat’s health, so she ran away from the joey’s mother out of fear of attack.
She says she “immediately” returned it to its mother.
“I have done a great deal of reflection on this situation and have realised that I did not handle this situation as best as I should have (…) I have learnt from this situation, and am truly sorry for the distress I have caused.”
In the now-deleted video posted to her 92,000 followers on Instagram, Jones said: “I caught a baby wombat”, as a man filming her laughs.
The US influencer has said she is ‘truly sorry’ for the distress caused. Pic: Sam Jones/Instagram
In the video, the wombat could be seen struggling and heard hissing as its mother followed on the road behind.
She returned the baby wombat to the roadside after several seconds.
Jones left the country on Friday after the Australian government said it was reviewing her visa.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese criticised the influencer, who sparked outrage across the country, telling reporters: “To take a baby wombat from its mother, and clearly causing distress to the mother, is just an outrage.
“And, you know, I suggest to this so-called influencer, maybe she might try some other Australian animals.
“Take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there.
“Take another animal that can actually fight back rather than stealing a baby wombat from its mother – see how you go there.”
Ex-central banker Mark Carney was sworn in as prime minister of Canada on Friday and immediately said he could work with U.S. President Donald Trump, who is promising tariffs that could devastate the Canadian economy.
Carney succeeds Justin Trudeau, who had a combative and often cold relationship with Trump. Carney, 59, made clear his approach would be different.
“We respect President Trump – President Trump has put some very important issues at the top of his agenda. We understand his agenda,” he told reporters after being sworn in, noting he had worked with Trump at international meetings.
Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada Mark Carney signs documents during his swearing-in ceremony as Canada’s next Prime Minister at an event in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, March 14, 2025. REUTERS/Blair Gable Purchase Licensing Rights
Carney said he would visit London and Paris next week. Canada has sought to shore up alliances in Europe as relations with the United States founder.
Carney crushed his rivals on Sunday in a race to become leader of the ruling Liberal Party. He replaces Trudeau, who spent more than nine years in office.
Former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, whose shock resignation last December triggered a crisis that helped push out Trudeau, becomes transport minister.
Carney, a former head of both the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, successfully argued his position as an outsider with a history of tackling crises meant he was the best person to take on Trump, who has repeatedly talked about annexing Canada.
“We will never, ever in any way, shape or form, be part of the United States,” he said on Friday.
The cabinet is unlikely in office for long, since Liberal insiders say Carney is set to call a snap election within the next two weeks. If he changes his mind, opposition parties say they will unite to bring down the minority government in a confidence vote at the end of March.
Once the election is called, Carney will be limited in what he can do politically because convention dictates he cannot make major decisions during a campaign.
Opinion polls currently suggest it will be a close race with the Conservatives, with neither party gaining enough seats for a majority government.
Russia will spare the lives of Ukrainian soldiers in its western Kursk region if Kyiv tells them to surrender, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump urged him to avoid a “horrible massacre” there.
Ukraine denied its men were encircled, describing that as a Russian fabrication, but President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the situation “very difficult”.
Trump, in a social media post, said he had asked the Russian president to spare the lives of thousands of Ukrainians who he said were “completely surrounded” and vulnerable.
“I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared. This would be a horrible massacre, one not seen since World War II,” he said.
Putin, addressing his Security Council, said he had read Trump’s appeal. While accusing Ukrainian troops of carrying out crimes against civilians that he said amounted to “terrorism” – something Kyiv denies – Putin said he understood the call by Trump to take humanitarian considerations into account.
“In this regard, I would like to emphasize that if (the Ukrainian troops) lay down their arms and surrender, they will be guaranteed life and decent treatment in accordance with international law and the laws of the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
“To effectively implement the appeal of the U.S. president, a corresponding order from the military-political leadership of Ukraine is needed for its military units to lay down their arms and surrender.”
The deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, former President Dmitry Medvedev, posted on social media that the flipside for Kyiv was that “if they refuse to lay down their arms, they will all be methodically and mercilessly destroyed”. COUNTER-INVASION
A Russian service member places a flag oh the roof of a house in a part of the Kursk region, which was recently retaken by Russia’s armed forces, in Russia. via Russian Defence Ministry Purchase Licensing Rights
Kursk became a key theatre of the war last August when Ukraine, 2-1/2 years after Putin’s full-scale invasion, turned the tables on Moscow by grabbing a piece of Russia’s own territory.
Seven months on, it is once again in the spotlight, as Russian forces attempt to flush out the last remaining Ukrainians and the U.S. urges Russia to agree to a ceasefire in the wider war. Putin said on Thursday the Ukrainians were trapped and facing a choice of “surrender or die”.
Ukraine’s general staff said on Friday: “Reports of the alleged ‘encirclement’ of Ukrainian units by the enemy in the Kursk region are false and fabricated by the Russians for political manipulation and to exert pressure on Ukraine and its partners.”
It said there had been 13 combat clashes on Friday and the battlefield situation was largely unchanged.
“Units of the Defence Forces of Ukraine have successfully regrouped, withdrawn to more advantageous defensive positions, and are executing their assigned tasks within the Kursk region.”
Zelenskiy told reporters that the Kursk offensive had succeeded in diverting Russian forces from elsewhere on the battlefront. Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-retakes-another-village-drive-push-ukraine-out-kursk-2025-03-14/
Pakistan Foregin Office Spokesperson did not implicate India in the train hijack incident but said it was “orchestrated and directed by terrorist ring leaders operating from abroad”.
BLA hijack Pakistan train Photo : AP
Islamabad: Pakistan has accused India of “sponsoring terrorism”, without naming New Delhi in the recent train hijack incident that was executed by Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). Twenty one passengers had died in the attack while more thant 30 Pak military personnel were killed
In a press briefing on the train hostage situation that lasted for more than 24 hours, Pakistan’sForeign Office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan claimed that terrorists were in direct communication with “Afghanistan-based planners throughout the incident”.
He added that Pakistan has repeatedly asked Afghanistan to deny the use of its soil for terrorist groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a report in PTI stated. “We urge Afghanistan to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers, of this reprehensible act of terrorism accountable and cooperate with the government of Pakistan to bring all those who are concerned with this attack, including the real sponsors of terrorism to justice,” he was quoted as saying.
India strongly reacted to the statement and said that Pakistan should look into its own affairs rather than poining fingers at others.
“We strongly reject the baseless allegations made by Pakistan. The whole world knows where the epicenter of global terrorism lies. Pakistan should look inwards instead of pointing fingers and shifting the blame for its own internal problems and failures on to others, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal said.
The BLA had taken Jaffar Express passengers hostage on Tuesday and threatened to “execute” them allif military intervened. On Wednesday, the Pakistan Army announced that all 33 remaining attackers who seized the train in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan region had been eliminated and the captive passengers freed.
On the question of any possible change of policy because India was blamed in the past for BLA’s activities, the spokesman said there was no change.
“There is no shift in our policy. And again, the facts have not changed. India is involved in sponsoring terrorism against Pakistan. What I was referring to was, in this particular incident, we have evidence of calls being traced to Afghanistan. This is what I said,” he answered.
The spokesperson went on to accuse India for “trying to destabilise its neighbouring countries and running a global assassination campaign”.
Unlike the internet generated through extensive cable networks, Satellite Access Internet, as the name suggests, provides the internet through communication satellites. And this system is known to be able to sustain the internet at higher speeds.
Internet has changed the primary means of our very existence over the past few decades. Over the recent years, especially in the past one decade, it has traversed past greater advancements from mobile internet, provided by telecom service providers, to broadband services, espousing internet surfing through WiFi systems in your house. Now, the new phenomenon on the horizon, that is catching speed is satellite internet.
The Age Of Internet
In India, the advent of internet and its forms may have been delayed, but its proliferation and subsequent consumption have expanded at an exponential speed. Each change has been marked by some marquee moments, from the days of BSNL and MTNL to the competitive game of throne between private telecom players.
Another major marquee event came to pass when Reliance Jio introduced a disruption in the market with the company’s ultra-cheap mobile internet plans in 2016. This disruption resulted in a complete overhaul of the sector, leaving just three main players, namely Vodafone Idea, Airtel, and Reliance Jio.
Another marquee moment came when these mainstream players jumped into broadband internet service, a field that was once dominated by localised internet service providers.
Today another disruption is en route: the storm of Elon Musk’s Starlink and Satellite Internet Access. Satellite Internet Access is not an old idea, but it has gathered pace over the past few years.
Unlike the internet generated through extensive cable networks, Satellite Access Internet, as the name suggests, provides the internet through communication satellites. And this system is known to be able to sustain the internet at higher speeds.
Will Starlink Make A Dent?
In India, these satellite services are not new, as we have had business-to-business activities carried out in remote locations, including ATMs, in rural areas. But this time, the scale and the ambition are far greater. Starlink is not all alone in this race, as it has competition in India as well.
This new phase of changing internet consumption has the old players, just as before. Reliance and Airtel are active participants in this race as well. In fact, Airtel took the lead in the matter, as Airtel-backed London-based Eutelsat OneWeb in March, claimed, that it would introduce its first service in India, by June. Meanwhile, Reliance is also in the process of establishing India’s first satellite internet system.
Starlink has its task cut out in this mix. Elon Musk’s company currently has this service available in different countries across all the continents on earth. Starlink is available in all of North America, including Canada, Mexico, and the US. Its services are available in South America as well, with the exception of Bolivia. Starlink currently boasts of being able to render services in a 100 countries.
It is also available in most of Europe as well. In addition, according to the company, it also has a set of countries on the waiting list where the service is currently not in place. India happens to be one of them.
Now, apart from the red tape and regulatory issues, it is also about the viability of establishments and services and most importantly, the price and economics of them.
Rachel Zegler performed at the film’s European premiere, held in at a castle in Northern Spain
Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White is set to be released in UK cinemas next week, marking the latest efforts by the film studio to revive a beloved old classic.
But the film, which stars Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, has faced several issues throughout its production.
The movie is being released amid a debate about how the seven dwarfs are represented on screen, while Zegler has made headlines for critical comments about the original 1937 film.
The European premiere was held on Wednesday at a castle in Northern Spain, instead of a more traditional and high-profile location such as London’s Leicester Square.
Dwarfism debate
The debate around the film began making headlines in January 2022, when Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, an actor with Dwarfism, described the decision to retell the story of “seven dwarfs living in a cave” as “backward”.
Disney has used computer-generated dwarfs in the remake and said it would “avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film”.
But this week, other actors with Dwarfism have said they would have liked the opportunity to play the roles.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, performer Choon Tan said the decision to use CGI was “absolutely absurd and discriminating in a sense”.
“There really is nothing wrong casting someone with dwarfism as a dwarf in any given opportunity,” he said.
“As long as we are treated equally and with respect, we’re usually more than happy to take on any acting roles that are suitable for us,” he added.
Another performer, Blake Johnston, told the newspaper that “we have plenty of dwarf actors out there who are dying for roles like this”.
He said he also said he believed Disney had “succumb to peer pressure on political correctness, which has now given top dwarf actors less work”.
Dinklage, who has a form of dwarfism called achondroplasia, criticised the film in 2022 during an interview with podcaster Marc Maron.
“I was a little taken aback by [the fact] they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White,” he said, referring to Colombian-American actress Zegler.
“You’re progressive in one way, but then you’re still making that backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together? Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soapbox? I guess I’m not loud enough.”
The actor had previously spoken about the representation of dwarfism, saying it was “bad writing” to make it a “dominant character trait”.
In a statement released after Dinklage’s comments, Disney said they were “taking a different approach with these seven characters” and had made their decision to use CGI after “consulting with members of the dwarf community”.
Pared-down premiere
The film’s European premiere took place on Wednesday at a remote castle in Spain, which was the inspiration behind the castle in the 1937 original animated film.
Zegler performed a rendition of original song Waiting On a Wish at the event on Wednesday evening in Segrovia, north-West of Madrid.
Most media outlets were not invited to the medieval castle, and Zegler instead performed to a relatively small crowd.
The Los Angeles premiere, meanwhile, will be reportedly smaller than usual for a film of this magnitude, with the stars only expected to pose for photographs and speak to Disney’s in-house crews.
News journalists have not been invited to attend the red carpet and therefore will not have the opportunity to interview the film’s cast and creatives.
However, the cast are taking part in a few select sit-down interviews with some outlets as part of a press junket which is taking place this week.
What hope now for avoiding catastrophic climate change? As all of the data on emissions, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and global warming point emphatically in the wrong direction, returning president Donald Trump has given the call to “drill, baby, drill”—a pledge to fast-track new fossil fuel projects and ramp up production. One presumes it’s an order that the world’s oil and gas giants, already backsliding from their previous commitments to transition to green energy, will be only too happy to heed.
Against this backdrop, the dark premonitions that haunt the minds of those persuaded by the scientific consensus on climate change—and the myriad horrors of a burning world—only intensify. With every tried and tested climate fix looking like a busted flush, radical new ideas are being explored with increasing urgency.
One of these is geoengineering. The large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to mitigate the impact of man-made climate change is seen by some as a technical challenge that will draw out the very best of human ingenuity and ultimately save the world. Others see it as the latest example of our deluded faith in technology.
You may be aware by now of solar geoengineering, which in most cases means reflecting sunlight before it has the chance to reach and heat Earth’s surface. Some believe we could pump sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to form a protective fug of sunlight-reflecting sulphate aerosols. Other theories, such as Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW), involve carbon sequestration. Rock weathering is actually a totally natural process in which carbon dioxide is drawn out of the atmosphere when a chemical reaction occurs between rainwater and rocks. With ERW, you accelerate this through mechanical means, allowing you to sequester significantly more CO2.
“This explosion would be well over a thousand times larger than the 50 megaton ‘Tsar Bomba’ test, the current largest nuclear explosion in history, which itself was around 3,800 times the strength of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”
It’s this process that forms the basis for perhaps the most extreme geoengineering proposal to emerge yet. In January, a paper appeared on arXiv, a website of non-peer-reviewed scholarly articles. Written by Andy Haverly, a 25-year-old Microsoft software engineer from Washington State, its proposition was a modest one—that we should try firing the largest nuclear bomb in history into the Earth’s crust in order to sequester 30 years’ worth of CO2 emissions in underwater rock.
In Haverly’s mind, the 81 gigaton nuclear bomb would be buried somewhere between 3 and 5km beneath the seabed of the remote Kerguelen Plateau, where the surrounding waters of the Antarctic Ocean themselves have a depth of 6 to 8km. This explosion would be well over a thousand times larger than the 50 megaton ‘Tsar Bomba’ test, the current largest nuclear explosion in history, detonated in 1961 by the Soviet Union in the Arctic Circle. (For reference, that explosion was around 3,800 times the strength of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. Apparently recycling isn’t going to cut it any more.)
According to Haverly, who doesn’t have a background in climate science or nuclear engineering but is currently studying for a PhD in quantum computing at Rochester Institute of Technology, the bomb would pulverize a vast amount of basalt rock (3.86 trillion tons, to be precise) into tiny pieces. Theoretically, this would then react with CO2 in the ocean to form stable carbonate minerals that lock the carbon away permanently. The deep ocean waters would, he claims, safely contain the blast.
The move is the latest development in a brewing trade war between the US and the EU.
Trump’s tariffs have upset global marketsImage: Leah Millis/REUTERS
US President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to impose tariffs of 200% on European wine, champagne and spirits if the European Union proceeds with plans to tax American whiskey imports.
The EU’s 50% whiskey tariff, which was due to take effect on April 1, was announced in response to the US administration’s plans to tax European steel and aluminum imports.
“If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES,” the US president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
How did we get to this point?
Trump’s announcement on Thursday is the latest development in an escalating trade dispute between the US and many of its allies and closest trading partners, including the EU, Canada and Mexico.
On Wednesday, he told reporters at the White House that he would “of course” retaliate to the EU’s tit-for-tat tariffs.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU’s reaction was “strong but proportionate.”
“As the US are applying tariffs worth $28 billion (€26 billion), we are responding with countermeasures worth €26 billion,” she said in a statement.
Von der Leyen added that EU authorities “remain open to negotiation” and “firmly believe that in a world fraught with geopolitical and economic uncertainties, it is not in our common interest to burden our economies with tariffs.”
Shortly before Trump announced the massive 200% tariff on Thursday, European Commission spokesman Olof Gill urged Washington to “immediately revoke” the duties on European steel and aluminum and called for negotiations.
The tariffs “bring nothing but lose-lose outcomes, and we want to focus on win-win outcomes,” Gill said.
Why is Trump imposing the tariffs?
Since returning to the White House on January 20, the US president has slapped tariffs on a range of products from both America’s allies as well as its rivals, including China.
Beijing has promised to use “all necessary measures” to respond to Trump’s measures. It has already imposed tariffs of 10% and 15% on US agriculture products.
Trump has used the threat of heavy tariffs to pressure governments into accepting various policy demands, including curbing fentanyl smuggling and illegal immigration, as well as to address what Washington perceives as global trading imbalances.
The video clip of the American tourist pestering the marsupial has outraged many in Australia. Her visa status is now being reviewed.
Wombats, which are native to Australia, are a protected speciesImage: Cover-Images/IMAGO
An American influencer has sparked outrage in Australia after she published a video which appears to show her grabbing a baby wombat.
In the video which has since been deleted from Instagram, self-described “outdoor enthusiast and hunter” Sam Jones is seen picking up the wild animal in an unknown location in Australia.
The wombat, which could be seen hissing and struggling, was followed by its mother on the road.
“I caught a baby wombat,” Jones says to the camera, before placing the joey back on the side of the road.
The marsupials are a protected species that are only found in Australia.
‘Leave the baby wombat alone’
Senior Australian government officials, including Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, on Thursday condemned the influencer.
“It looked pretty dreadful, didn’t it?” Wong told Australia’s Channel Seven, before adding, “look, leave the baby wombat alone.”
In a statement, Burke said authorities were looking into whether the American woman had violated the terms of her visa.
Donald Trump’s cancellation of millions in aid to the country left a massive funding gap. The EU’s investment package includes funding to boost vaccine manufacturing and for a transition to clean energy.
The United States’ aid withdrawal has allowed the European Union to become an even bigger partner for South AfricaImage: Esa Alexander/REUTERS
The European Union will invest $5 billion (€4.7 billion) in South African aid and development projects, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen announced Thursday.
The majority of the investments will go to supporting the transition to clean energy, such as improving wind, solar and hydrogen power production.
The funds will also be put into vaccine manufacturing.
“South Africa wants to protect the health of [its] people… We Europeans want to diversify some of our most critical supply chains. This is what I call a true mutual interest,” von der Leyen said.
The announcement came at the first bilateral summit between the bloc and South Africa, the continent’s most advanced economy, in seven years.
What led to the summit?
The summit in Cape Town was called to strengthen ties between the bloc and South Africa, the EU’s largest sub-Saharan trading partner.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the meeting came at a time of increasing “global uncertainty … characterized by rising unilateralism, economic nationalism,” a reference to the impact of US President Donald Trump’s policies.
The United States’ decision to ax nearly all aid to South Africa has sparked concerns about funding gaps in critical areas, such as HIV/AIDS treatment.
Details of amazingly luxurious pads in Spain, Greece and France revealed
JUSTIN and Hailey Bieber are considering a selection of stunning European villas to escape the “madness” of their life in the United States, a source has told The U.S. Sun.
The spotlight on Justin, 31, and his young family has intensified in recent weeks as rumors about his health continue to circulate.
WILD BEHAVIOR
His representatives have denied allegations of drug use, despite the 30-year-old appearing alarmingly gaunt and disheveled in recent photos.
Hailey, 28, was photographed alone at Paris Fashion Week, with the couple not seen together publicly for some time.
Sources told The Sun last month that their marriage is on the rocks, with their issues described as “bigger than just a fight.”
However, an insider specializing in luxury real estate in southern Europe claims they’ve been instructed by the Biebers to find a retreat in the sun where the couple can “enjoy some time far away from the spotlight.”
“They want to enjoy a simpler life again,” the insider said. “A slower pace of life to reconnect in a quiet environment.”
The realtor also revealed that, due to the intense scrutiny, Bieber expressed interest in spending more time abroad, possibly living outside North America for most of the year.
The singer, who welcomed his first child Jack Blues last year, is reportedly seeking a property with “great weather, privacy, countryside, and a quiet environment” where his wife and young son can spend quality time together.
“They told us they want to disconnect,” the realtor added.
The U.S. Sun has reviewed an extensive list of opulent, multi-million-dollar properties in Spain, Greece, and the south of France.
The homes range from $5.6 million to a staggering $18.5 million, but each checks the boxes for the ultimate getaway spot for the rich and famous seeking a break from the spotlight.
LUXURY LISTINGS
One option includes a seven-bedroom, six-bathroom villa in Mallorca, Spain, which, according to its official description, is “located in a privileged residential area with breathtaking sea and mountain views.”
The listing adds, “The property comprises two levels and features a majestic entrance hall with marble floors and exquisite woodworking, which is a prominent feature throughout the rooms. A magnificent staircase leads to the upper floor, where a spacious hallway leads to the master suite.”
The 6,244-square-foot villa is priced at $6.1 million. Meanwhile, a $5.6 million villa in Ibiza is also on the table.
This residence includes a heated saltwater pool and is situated in the tranquil Benimussa Valley, far from the chaos of the island’s world-famous party scene.
A $12.5 million Mallorcan “dream home” is another contender, set on an expansive plot of land in one of the region’s most exclusive areas.
MEGA-BUCKS MANSIONS
The most expensive option on their list is a stunning residence in the iconic Côte d’Azur region of southern France.
This three-level home, complete with an elevator, offers breathtaking views and “beautiful architectural style in a dominant position overlooking the bay of Villefranche-sur-Mer and Cap Ferrat.”
The property also includes a staff apartment, should the Biebers wish to bring additional help.
One of the most striking options is located on the Greek island of Mykonos. Featuring eight bedrooms and eight bathrooms, the “ultra-luxury” Villa Calypso is described as a “real Mykonian palace.”
The villa checks every box, and as the official description notes, it is “totally secured with a high-tech alarm system and outdoor cameras.”
It also boasts an outdoor jacuzzi that can accommodate up to 10 people.
THE pristine beach where college student Sudiksha Konanki disappeared during spring break was already haunted by a grim tragedy that happened just before she arrived for her vacation.
Konanki, 20, was last seen during the early morning hours of March 6 on the beach near Punta Cana’s Riu República Hotel – a five-star coastal resort with dangerously high waves and strong currents.
The extensive search operation for Konanki, which includes over 300 law enforcement personnel, has entered its seventh day as American and foreign investigators continue to piece together the University of Pittsburgh student’s final moments.
Konanki’s disappearance in the Caribbean waters came just a few weeks after four tourists died at the Punta Cana same resort as Konanki.
The tourists went for a swim in Playa Arena Gorda when they were swept away by strong currents and drowned on January 17, according to the Dominican Republic’s civil defense agency.
The bodies of all four were recovered from the ocean on January 18.
Sudiksha Konanki, a student at the University of Pittsburgh, went missing in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic while on spring breakCredit: Handout
The victims were identified as Polish nationals Marcin Teodor Checinski, 47, and Sylwia Aleksandra, 52, Portuguese tourist Nelzon Nunes Ribeiro, 47, and Russian native Jakub Tomasz Pedziach.
Two others who were also part of the group that was swept away survived, the Dominican Republic’s civil defense agency said.
At the time of the January drownings, a red flag was flying on the beach to warn sunbathers of dangerous ocean conditions.
DANGEROUS CONDITIONS
On the day of Konanki’s disappearance, sea conditions were also dangerous, with high waves reported, Agustin Morillo Rodriguez, the general commander of the Dominican Republic navy, told CNN.
Previous guests of the Riu República Hotel, an all-inclusive adults-only resort, have spoken of the rugged sea conditions during their stays.
Guest D’Lani Sweeney was staying at the resort on the same day Konanki went missing and recalled the waves being dangerously high.
“I remember the waves being a lot bigger than they normally were,” Sweeney told NewsNation.
“Me and my friends were on the beach and I remember telling them that I was not going to go into the ocean because I know I could swim but not that well enough to feel safe in the ocean.
“I know a couple of friends that did go in but they weren’t in for a while and there weren’t as many people in the ocean as we normally would see.”
Red flags were flying at the time Sweeney was on the beach, video showed.
PERSON OF INTEREST
Meanwhile, as investigators comb the Caribbean Sea for any sight of Konanki, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, in the college student’s hometown in Virginia, has named a person of interest in her disappearance.
The sheriff’s office told The U.S. Sun they consider Joshua Steven Riibe, a 22-year-old who was also staying at the Riu hotel, a person of interest because he may have been the last person to have seen Konanki.
However, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office stressed Riibe has not been charged with a crime and is not considered a suspect.
“We want to be clean, this is not a criminal case, it is a missing persons case,” a sheriff’s official added.
“Person of interest does not mean suspect. It’s still an active investigation.”
Grainy surveillance photos showed Konanki and Riibe, a former high school football and wrestling athlete from Iowa, walking towards the beach with a group of people at around 4:15 am on March 6.
Several members of the group eventually left the beach and headed back to their hotel rooms, leaving Riibe and Konanki alone on the beach.
Riibe, who police said has been cooperative during their investigation, told officials that he and Konanki went for a swim but were caught in a large wave.
The Iowa native claimed he was able to swim back to shore but got sick after swallowing seawater, according to the Daily Mail.
However, Riibe has given detectives three different versions of what happened that morning, according to the New York Post.
In another version, Riibe told investigators that he fell asleep on the beach, and the last thing he remembered was Konanki walking on the beach, but when he woke up, she was gone.
Riibe also claimed he felt sick and left Konanki alone, standing in knee-deep water.
Surveillance photos released on Wednesday showed a shirtless, barefoot Riibe walking alone on the resort grounds without Konanki.
Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson debuted their new podcast on WednesdayCredit: YouTube/Michelle Obama
MICHELLE Obama has opened up on her marital struggles with husband Barack after a flurry of concern that they’re headed for a split.
The former first lady, 61, admitted to being irritated by her husband for years in a new podcast released weeks after she skipped high-profile events that he was forced to attend alone.
And after months of mystery around Michelle’s whereabouts, she’s returning to the public eye today at the final day of the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
She is recording a podcast episode with her older brother after launching a new weekly show in which they discuss various topics concerning everyday life.
In her debut episode, Michelle gave listeners a sneak peek into her marriage with the 44th president and how his lack of punctuality irritated her at the start of their relationship.
“Being married to the president of the United States is a thing that none of us kind of banked on,” Michelle told her brother, Craig Robinson.
“We knew Barack was smart and ambitious,” she added before admitting her brother convinced her to support Obama’s presidential campaign.
“You talked me into supporting his run cause I was definitely like, nope, nope, this is crazy, we’ve done enough crazy stuff,” Michelle said.
Robinson then shared how Obama, 63, spoke to him about being unable to persuade Michelle to back his White House efforts.
“I did. Barack came to me and he’s like, ‘I can’t convince your sister to go along with this,’ and I’m like, ‘woah, woah, go along with what?’ and he’s like, ‘I think I’m going to run for president.’ And I was like, ‘what? I wouldn’t go along with it,'” Robinson said.
Speaking to Michelle, he continued, “I convinced you to not penalize him for being really good at what he does.”
In the same episode of IMO, Michelle acknowledged her husband’s belatedness would bother her.
“Barack had to adjust to what on time was, you know,” she said.
“I’ve got this husband who, when it’s time to leave, he’s getting up and going to the bathroom.
“And I was like, dude, three o’clock departure means you’ve done all that. It’s like, don’t start looking for your glasses, you know, at the 3 departure.
“He’s improved over 30 years of marriage, but that was a ‘you must adjust.'”
Despite the siblings’ venture into podcasting, the first two episodes have failed to reach a large audience.
In total, the first two episodes of IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson have generated less than 70,000 views on YouTube.
MARRIAGE STRUGGLES?
The podcast comes as rumors have circulated about the Obamas’ supposed marriage strife.
The former president and Michelle have been spotted in public on numerous occasions without each other.
Divorce chatter first emerged on social media when Obama attended Jimmy Carter’s state funeral on January 9 in Washington DC alone.
Obama joined the other four living presidents – Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush – and their wives in honoring Carter, who died on December 29, 2024, at age 100.
However, missing from the gallery was Michelle, who was still on an extended vacation in Hawaii at the time.
Michelle then skipped Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, despite all of the other former first ladies and presidents attending.
Her team did not provide a reason for her absence.
Obama was pictured seated alone next to Bush and his wife, Laura Bush.
Then, on February 21, Michelle and her brother were pictured at the Italian restaurant hotspot, Mother Wolf, in Los Angeles without Obama.
DONALD Trump has requested his military draw up plans to reclaim the Panama Canal, two officials have claimed.
The demands made by The White House come as Trump says he wants to crackdown China’s ever-growing presence in the region.
US President Donald Trump has ordered the military to devise plans to ‘take back’ the Panama CanalCredit: AFP
In his address to congress last week, the President said: “To further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal.”
Two US officials who are familiar with the plans, told NBC News that Trump’s administration is pushing ahead with this strategy despite no clarity on what “reclaiming” means.
Ahead of his inauguration in late January, Trump refused to rule out using force at the canal that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean.
Both US officials have now said that US Southern Command is working on the plans to achieve Trump’s goal.
The various strategies are said to vary from partnering with the Panamanian military to US troops taking it by force.
Officials said this latter option is a less likely route that will be taken.
US military force will depend on the cooperation of the Panamanian military with America, they added.
The sources familiar with the plans said the President is focused on boosting the US presence in the region as China tries to get more of a foothold.
Concerns are especially around Chinese access to the canal, they said, after Trump claimed Chinese-supported ports bookend the 50-mile canal.
He said this is a security threat due to the increased potential that China could seize control the vital strait in a bid to strong-arm the US.
But both Panama and China have denied that there is foreign interference in the neutral canal that has its neutrality enshrined in a US-Panama treaty.
China has accused the US of pressuring Panamanian officials into blocking Chinese aid projects after Panama did not renew a major infrastructure agreement with the nation.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said last month that China “firmly opposes the U.S. smearing and undermining the Belt and Road cooperation through means of pressure and coercion.”
He added: “China supports Panama’s sovereignty over the canal and is committed to maintaining its status as a permanently neutral international waterway.
“China has never been involved in the management or operation of the canal, nor has it interfered in its affairs.”
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino has echoed these comments, telling the US that his government alone dictates the canal.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to be briefed on the Panama strategy proposals this week ahead of a visit to Panama next month, the officials said.
They added that a forceful US invasion of the canal is hugely unlikely and would only come about if having a larger US military presence in the region does not accomplish Trump’s goal.
Strategies that may be on the table include making sure US ships can safely travel through the canal or restoring full US ownership and operation of the passageway.
US forces may also be used to secure ports, build new ports along the canal or take over operations of the locks along the passageway.
What happens on the golf course apparently doesn’t really stay on the golf course.
Citing four sources, the Daily Mail exclusively reported Thursday that esteemed golfer Tiger Woods and Donald Trump Jr.’s ex-wife, Vanessa Trump, have been dating in secret for the past few months.
The pair have reportedly been together since Thanksgiving, and have discussed their relationship among their close circle with all of Vanessa’s five children—whom she shares with Don Jr.—being aware of the budding romance.
“Tiger and Vanessa have been seeing each other since just before Thanksgiving,” an unnamed source told the Mail. “She comes to his place on Jupiter Island. They’re not living together. She comes over and spends the night and leaves in the morning. Maybe a few nights a week.”
“They just love hanging out, having dinner and schmoozing together,” the source added. “They’re sticking close to home, have decided not to make it a thing and go out in public. Not just yet anyway.”
An additional source “close to the Trump family” also confirmed the relationship to People magazine, claiming that Trump Jr. is “cool” with the happy, new couple.
A representative for Woods did not immediately reply to the Daily Beast’s request for comment. Vanessa’s representatives could not immediately be reached.
Alongside being an avid golfer, Vanessa has a slew of other similarities tying her to Woods. The duo both reportedly live 20 minutes away from each other in Palm Beach. Their children, Vanessa’s daughter Kai, 17, and Wood’s eldest children Charlie, 16, and Sam, 17, also all attend the same private school—The Benjamin School which boasts a $38,595 yearly tuition—according to the Mail.
During The Genesis Invitational golf tournament last month, Woods and Vanessa were spotted arriving together with aspiring pro-golfer Kai swiftly in tow.
President Donald Trump is famously friends with Woods, who joined the president for a game of golf as recently as last month and attended a Black History Month reception at the White House a few short weeks after. In 2019, Trump awarded Woods with a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his embodiment of “American excellence, devotion, and drive.”
North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Mark Rutte demurred on Thursday when President Donald Trump baited him into backing his dream of the United States annexing Greenland.
Rutte—who has been nicknamed NATO’s “Trump whisperer” for his tact in handling the mercurial politician—shared laughs with the president throughout their Oval Office meeting on Thursday. He sat silently as the president rambled about the possibility of Canada, a NATO member, becoming a U.S. state.
But the former Dutch prime minister drew the line at Greenland.
Donald Trump and Mark Rutte share one of many laughs in the Oval Office on Thursday. Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERS
When asked if he still believed the U.S. would take over the Danish autonomous territory, Trump said, “I think it will happen” before turning to Rutte.
“I didn’t give it much thought before, but I’m sitting with a man that could be very instrumental” in the effort to take over Greenland, he said. “You know, Mark, we need that for international security.”
Rutte, who appeared uncomfortable but remained composed, brushed off the remark.
“When it comes to Greenland, yes or no, joining the U.S., I would leave that outside, for me, this discussion, because I don’t want to drag NATO into that,” he said.
Polls show Greenlanders do not want to join the U.S. by overwhelming margins. The only pro-Trump candidate in the country’s elections, which took place last week, brought in a dismal 1.1 percent of the vote.
CHILLING pictures showing China’s giant D-Day style invasion barges have fuelled fears that they are preparing to invade Taiwan.
The giant troop-carrying barges are capable of delivering fleets of tanks and thousands of troops directly onto Taiwanese roads.
Pictures have revealed China’s giant D-Day style invasion barges moored off the coastCredit: X/@xaviervavChina’s resources far out power Taiwan’s
China is building at least five of the giant troop-carrying barges, according to satellite imagery and military sources.
The communist state is also building its largest ever aircraft carrier – capable of launching war jets from four runways at the same time.
The intensive work going on in Chinese shipyards suggests China is planning a massive amphibious assault.
Experts say the huge purpose-built barges resemble the floating Mulberry Harbours used by allied forces during the D-Day landings in June, 1944.
The barges were spotted moored off the coast of Taiwan, and sparked new fears that China is preparing to invade Taiwan.
Bringing the self-governed province back in line with mainland China has been a goal of president Xi Jinping’s for a long time and recent military activity has shown that China is ready to take it back by force.
The self-governing nation has been protected by the firepower of ally America for decades.
But alarm was spreading across Taiwan after Donald Trump sent mixed messages about continuing US support.
President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia supported a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but sought a number of clarifications and conditions that appeared to rule out a quick end to the fighting.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the sharpest confrontation for decades between Moscow and the West.
Putin’s heavily qualified support for the U.S. ceasefire proposal looked designed to signal goodwill to Washington and open the door to further talks with U.S. President Donald Trump.
But Putin said many crucial details needed to be sorted out and any agreement must address the root causes of the conflict. Russia called its 2022 invasion a “special military operation” designed to “denazify” Ukraine and halt an expansion of NATO.
“We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities,” Putin told reporters at the Kremlin. “The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it.”
“But we proceed from the fact that this cessation should be such that it would lead to long-term peace and would eliminate the original causes of this crisis.”
He went on to list a slew of issues he said needed clarifying and thanked Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, for his efforts to end the war. Both Moscow and Washington now cast the conflict as a deadly proxy war that could have escalated into World War Three.
Maria Branyas Morera, US-born supercentenarian who died in Spain last August, found to have microbiota of an infant
Maria Branyas celebrates her 117th birthday in a nursing home in Girona, Spain, on 4 March 2024. Photograph: Residencia Santa Maria del Tura de Olot/Reuters
The US-born woman who was the world’s oldest living person before she died in Spain last August at age 117 once attributed her longevity to “luck and good genetics”. And, evidently, Maria Branyas Morera was right.
A study of Branyas’s microbiome and DNA that scientists began conducting before her death reportedly determined that the genes she inherited allowed her cells to essentially feel and behave as if they were 17 years younger than they actually were. And Branyas’s microbiota – which primarily refers to the bacteria in people’s guts that has a role in keeping them healthy – mirrored that of an infant, according to the research led by University of Barcelona genetics professor Manel Esteller, a leading expert on ageing.
The daily newspaper Ara, which covers the Catalan region where she resided much of her life, first reported on the results of the study into what was described as Branyas’s “privileged genome” earlier in March. Esteller’s team found that Branyas retained her lucidity until almost the very end of her life.
And the ailments that she grappled with during her extended golden years were largely limited to joint pain and hearing loss.
Ara reported that Esteller’s work on Branyas amounts to the most complete research yet into a so-called supercentenarian – someone who is 110 or older – as well as some possible explanations for the longevity that marks some lives in particular.
The researchers noted how Branyas made a number of healthy lifestyle choices that also helped her take advantage of her unique genetic makeup. She adhered to a Mediterranean diet that included three yogurts daily.
She avoided drinking alcohol and smoking, enjoyed walks, and constantly surrounded herself with family and loved ones, all of which apparently aided her in staving off declines both physical and mental that could have shortened her life, the researchers concluded.
Esteller and his colleagues said that they hope the study into Branyas provides useful information to those seeking to develop medications and treatments for age-related illnesses.
They said Branyas exemplified how ageing and sickness – at least in certain conditions – do not necessarily have to go hand-in-hand. And the results of the genetic study done on her “challenge the perception that [the two] are inexorably linked”, they also said, according to Spain’s EFE news service.
Branyas was born in San Francisco on 4 March 1907, after her parents moved from Spain and Mexico to the US. She also spent time in Texas and New Orleans before her family returned to Spain in 1915 – amid the first world war – and settled in Catalonia.
Some of the major global events that she subsequently lived through were the Spanish civil war, the second world war, the 1918 flu pandemic and Covid-19.
She made international news headlines by contracting Covid in 2020, when Spain was one of the countries hit hardest by the virus and protective vaccines were not yet available. But her Covid bout was asymptomatic, and she recovered relatively easily.
Vladimir Putin has broken his silence on the proposed ceasefire in Ukraine (Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Vladimir Putin broke his silence on the proposed 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine – and said the Kremlin would continue to reject the deal until Ukrainian troops in Kursk ‘surrender or die’
Vladimir Putin has said Ukrainian troops involved in a counter-offensive will have to “surrender or die” before he agrees to a ceasefire.
Russia today rejected a proposal for a 30-day ceasefire drawn up by the US and Ukraine after a nine-hour meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. Asked about the ceasefire at a press conference alongside Belarus’s president Alexander Lukashenko, Putin thanked Donald Trump for trying to get a deal done – but suggested he would not agree to it in its current form. He said: “We agree with the proposal for a ceasefire to cease hostilities, but we proceed from the fact that this ceasefire should lead to an enduring peace, and should remove the root causes of this crisis.”
Putin also recalled his visit to Kursk yesterday, where Russian troops are attempting to repel a Ukrainian counteroffensive in their own territory. He said “the situation is fully under our control, and the group that invaded our territory has been fully isolated”. The Russian leader added that Ukrainian troops can no longer leave the area, and they will have to “surrender or die”. He identified the fighting in the region as one of the issues preventing a deal being reached.
It comes as Donald Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow today for high-level talks with Vladimir Putin aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The property mogul, who was appointed to a senior White House foreign policy role by Trump, is expected to meet with the Russian president after his visit was confirmed by US officials and Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, who said the meeting would be held behind closed doors in the Kremlin.
Mr Ushakov said Russia would not agree the the current ceasefire proposal as it would “give us nothing,” adding that it would “only give the Ukrainians a chance to regroup, consolidate their forces and keep doing the same in the future.” He said Putin wants a “long-term peaceful settlement that takes into account Moscow’s interests and concerns”, echoing statements from Putin himself.
Stargazers in North and South America will be able to view a red-colored “blood moon” starting Thursday night in the first total lunar eclipse visible on the continents since 2022.
The celestial event, observable with the naked eye, will have more than an hour of totality and can additionally be seen in parts of western Europe and Africa, as well as New Zealand.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth goes between the moon and the sun, casting the Earth’s shadow on the moon.
A rare total lunar eclipse involves the Earth’s umbra, the darkest part of the planet’s shadow, covering the moon.
According to NASA, this type of eclipse can also be called a “blood moon” due to the reddish-orange color the moon can become during totality.
The coloration occurs due to sunlight scattering through the Earth’s atmosphere before reaching the moon’s surface—shorter wavelengths like blue and violet fail to reach the moon, leaving only longer wavelengths such as red and orange to illuminate it.
As a result, the more items there are in the Earth’s atmosphere—such as clouds or dust—the redder the moon will appear during the eclipse.
“Keep a close eye on the weather forecast leading up to the eclipse,” said NASA Chief Scientist Renee Weber in a statement. “That totality will last for close to an hour, so even if it’s cloudy you may still be able to glimpse it if the clouds are scattered.”
US officials said military action in Panama would only be considered if the country does not allow Donald Trump to “reclaim” the canal.
Donald Trump wants to increase the US military presence in Panama. (Image: Getty)
Donald Trump has reportedly ordered the US military to come up with plans to increase the number of troops in Panama as part of his mission to “reclaim” the canal. US Southern Command, responsible for security cooperation and operations in Central America, has drafted ideas such as working with the Panamaian military and US troops taking the canal by force, two officials told NBC News. The likelihood of military force depends on the level of partnership agreed upon by the Panamanian military, they added.
This is part of Washington’s plan to reduce the level of influence China has over the region, particularly when it comes to access to the canal, though both China and Panama have denied any foreign interference in the waterway. The US president said last week that “to further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it”.
While it remains unclear what “reclaiming means”, the officials said US Southern Command chief Admiral Alvin Holsey sent draft strategies to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth this week ahead of his visit to Panama next month.
They stressed that military action in Panama would only be considered if the country does not allow Mr Trump to “reclaim” the canal.
The Republican said the South American country imposes “ridiculous” and “very unfair” tolls on US ships travelling through the canal.
Tesla is getting crushed in China, its most important market outside the United States and one that it had dominated for years.
When Liu Jie, 32, decided to buy an electric car in October, Tesla was one of her top choices. But after test-driving a few Chinese cars, she went with a sports sedan from Xiaomi, a consumer gadget maker better known for its smartphones, kettles and robot vacuums.
“Xiaomi is more fashionable,” Ms. Liu said last week in Beijing. “Tesla, for me, it’s a little bit normal. You can see the Tesla Model Y everywhere.”
It’s not personal, buyers said. Tesla is still considered a top brand, and Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, is admired in China. Beijing rolled out the red carpet when he broke ground on the company’s first overseas factory in Shanghai. Mr. Musk is credited with igniting China’s local electric vehicle industry.
But now that market is a blood bath of competition from Chinese rivals. Chinese drivers that once flocked to Tesla are turning more and more to local brands that offer more efficient cars with better technology, sometimes at half the price.
Tesla’s biggest rival, the electric car giant BYD, sold 481,318 cars in the first two months of this year, over three quarters more than it did over the same period last year. Tesla sold 60,480 vehicles in the first two months of the year, a drop of 14 percent from last year.
Tesla’s sales in China are plunging as the carmaker faces criticism over Mr. Musk’s role as an aide to President Trump in charge of cutting federal spending. Tesla lost about a quarter of its value over the past month as investors shunned the stock.
The threat that BYD poses Tesla in China has been building for years. BYD has sold around one million more cars each year for the past three years. The popularity of BYD has been driven in part by the fact that its cars are cheaper. It has helped that local governments sometimes steer business in the company’s direction.
But a property crisis and a broadly slowing consumer economy have hit households and badly dented people’s appetite to shop, making it hard for all carmakers. Things have become so bad that the government began offering subsidies a year ago for consumers to trade in their old cars. The government increased the incentives last week. Domestic companies have benefited from the subsidies, but so has Tesla.
Even amid the economic slowdown, there is still a market for luxury cars, for those who can afford them. Ms. Liu, who had a budget of around $41,000, said Tesla would have been an affordable luxury option compared with the $41,305 Xiaomi SU7 Max that she bought. And while Tesla offers a five-year zero-interest loan, Xiaomi does not offer any financing.
Many Chinese drivers are also willing to pay more for advanced technology like self-driving, an area in which Tesla has lagged because the government has delayed the company’s introduction of similar or better technology.
But Tesla faces another problem: demand. Sales are slowing for all cars in China.
The policies aimed at replacing gas guzzlers with electric vehicles have helped. In cities like Shanghai and Beijing, car owners can trade in older cars for a new one and get a nearly $2,100 subsidy. In some Tesla dealerships, employees have created a wall with photos of the cars that buyers have traded in — they range from Porsches to Mercedeses and even the occasional Chinese car.
Former Barclays CEO Jes Staley walks near the court on the day Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey gives evidence at London’s Upper Tribunal in Staley’s appeal against a proposed financial services ban over his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, in London, Britain, March 7, 2025. REUTERS/Toby… Purchase Licensing Rights
Former Barclays (BARC.L), opens new tab boss Jes Staley had sex with a member of serial paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s staff, the banker told a court on the third day of his evidence as he appeals against a proposed financial services ban.
Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority said in 2023 that it would ban Staley and fine him 1.8 million pounds ($2.3 million) for allegedly misleading the watchdog over his relationship with Epstein. He is giving evidence at London’s Upper Tribunal this week.
The 68-year-old, who said on Tuesday that he had no idea about the late financier Epstein’s “monstrous activities”, was asked by the FCA’s lawyer about evidence Staley had given in a lawsuit against him by his previous employer JPMorgan (JPM.N), opens new tab.
JPMorgan, where Staley was previously head of the private bank and had Epstein as a client, was sued by the U.S. Virgin Islands for allegedly ignoring Epstein’s sex trafficking, with the bank in turn suing Staley before the case was settled.
In the U.S. litigation, Staley was asked about having “had sexual intercourse with a woman … at Mr Epstein’s brother’s apartment” in New York, the FCA’s lawyer Leigh-Ann Mulcahy said.
Staley said he was introduced to the woman by Jeffrey Epstein, the encounter was consensual and that “she was a part of his staff as I recall”.
The FCA also referred to the fact Epstein had asked Staley to be trustee of his estate as evidence of their close relationship. Staley said: “I turned him down.”
Staley’s appeal centres on a 2019 letter sent by Barclays Chair Nigel Higgins to the FCA, which approached the British bank shortly after Epstein’s arrest brought scrutiny on the financier’s other high-profile associates.
The FCA says the letter contained two misleading statements: that Staley “did not have a close relationship” with Epstein and their last contact was “well before he joined Barclays in 2015”. Staley says both statements were accurate.
NASA and SpaceX on Monday postponed the launch of the Crew-10 Mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch was scheduled for Wednesday after US President Donald Trump urged SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to rescue the stranded astronauts – Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore
Sunita Williams And Butch Wilmore’s Return Delayed As NASA-SpaceX Postpone Mission To Bring Back Stranded Astronauts | X/SpaceX
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and SpaceX on Monday postponed the launch of the Crew-10 Mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Notably, as part of the mission, a crew of four astronauts on board the Falcon 9 rocket would have replaced the stranded NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.
The mission was postponed due to a “hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm for the Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A” at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.US. As per the NASA statement, opportunity is no earlier than 7:26 pm EDT on Thursday.
Tweet By SpaceX:
Standing down from tonight’s launch opportunity of @NASA‘s Crew-10 mission to the @Space_Station
Launch coverage will start at 3:25 pm (local time) on NASA+. and docking is targeted at 11:30 pm (local time) on Friday. A crew of four will head to the ISS onboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a six-month stay.
“With a March 13 Crew-10 launch, the Crew-9 mission with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, would depart the space station no earlier than 9:05 a.m. Monday, March 17, pending weather at the splashdown locations off the coast of Florida,” NASA said in a statement.
“Crew-10 is the 10th crew rotation mission of SpaceX’s human space transportation system and its 11th flight with crew aboard, including the Demo-2 test flight, to the space station through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program,” it added.Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been stranded on the ISS for nine months after reaching there in June last year. They were supposed to stay there for about a week.The astronauts were transported from Earth to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft However, the spacecraft came back to Earth unmanned in September. As per a Fox News report, Starliner had faced “helium leaks” and “issues with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters” while docking with the ISS.Source: https://www.freepressjournal.in/science/sunita-williams-and-butch-wilmores-return-delayed-as-nasa-spacex-postpone-mission-to-bring-back-stranded-astronauts
Pakistani security forces stormed a train on Wednesday that had been hijacked by separatist militants, killing all 33 attackers and ending a day-long standoff involving hundreds of hostages, the military said.
Separatist Baloch militants on Tuesday blew up the railway track and hurled rockets at the Jaffar Express when it was on its way to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from Balochistan’s capital of Quetta, carrying 440 people.
The military said 21 hostages and four security troops were killed over the course of the standoff.
“Today we freed a large number of people, including women and children … The final operation was carried out with great care,” military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said, adding that no civilians were killed in the final stage of the operation.
Before the army announcement, the Baloch Liberation Army, which claimed the attack, said it had killed 50 passengers on Wednesday evening. It had said on Tuesday that it was holding 214 people, mostly security personnel.
It had threatened to start executing hostages unless authorities met its 48-hour deadline for the release of Baloch political prisoners, activists, and missing people it says had been abducted by the military.
The BLA is the largest of several ethnic armed groups battling the government in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.
The militants have in recent months stepped up their activities using new tactics to inflict high death and injury tolls and target Pakistan’s military.
Baloch militant groups say they have been fighting for a larger share in the regional wealth of mines and minerals denied by the central government. SUICIDE VESTS
Junior Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry told Geo television earlier on Wednesday that militants were wearing suicide vests as they sat among the passengers held hostage, complicating the rescue attempt. He said 70-80 attackers had hijacked the train.
Plain clothes security force perosnnel, who were rescued from a train after it was attacked by separatist militants, leave Mach railway station in Mach, Balochistan, Pakistan, March 12, 2025. REUTERS/Naseer Ahmed Purchase Licensing Rights
The military sent in hundreds of troops and also deployed the airforce and special forces to tackle the militants, Chaudhry said.
In the final phase of the operation, he said special forces first took out the suicide bombers before troops went from carriage to carriage to kill the rest of the militants.
He did not give a number of those rescued in this phase of the operation and it was not immediately clear how or to where the passengers would be evacuated.
The train driver and several others had already been killed, officials said earlier, before the army statement.
Government officials had said earlier, also before the army statement, that 190 of those on board had already been rescued, with more than 50 taken to Quetta to be reunited with their loved ones.
Muhammad Ashraf, 75, who was travelling on the train, said he heard a loud explosion in the mountainous area, which shook all the carriages.
“We lay on the floor once heavy firing started. Shortly after, armed men entered the train and checked our identities,” he said in Quetta.
Leader of Demokraatit, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, plays an instrument during the election party at cafe Killut in Nuuk, Greenland, March 12, 2025. Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
Greenland’s pro-business Demokraatit Party surged to victory in a shake-up that could boost U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts to tap the island’s mineral wealth, with the victors keen for reforms favouring private enterprise and mining.
The Democrats, which favour gradual independence from Denmark, more than tripled their seats to 10 in the 31-seat Inatsisartut parliament, according to results released on Wednesday, and will begin talks to form a coalition.
The strongly pro-independence Naleraq doubled their seats to eight from the prior election, while the ruling coalition lost almost half of its share of the vote.
“People want change,” the Democrats’ leader Jens-Frederik Nielsen told reporters in Nuuk after the final vote count. “We don’t want independence tomorrow, we want to build a good foundation.”
Independence became the central campaign theme in Tuesday’s election after Trump’s repeated insistence that the semi-autonomous Danish territory is vital to U.S. national security and will eventually become part of the United States.
At three times the size of Texas, with a population of just 57,000, the Arctic nation contains vast mineral resources, including rare earth minerals critical for high-tech industries, ranging from electric vehicles to missile systems.
Despite gains for rapid independence advocate Naleraq, Rasmus Leander Nielsen, associate professor at the University of Greenland, said the Democrats were more likely to form a broad coalition with one or both of the outgoing ruling parties, Inuit Ataqatigiit and Siumut, in a show of national unity. GOOD NEWS FOR TRUMP?
In the election campaign, the Democrats’ Nielsen rebuffed Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland, calling it “a threat to our political independence”.
However, in campaign documents, the party said it would be open to dialogue with the U.S. on commercial interests.
The election result has moved business development and the mining agenda to the centre of Greenlandic politics.
“If you add up the election result, voters were driven by business development and independence. And that’s good news for Trump,” said Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, a professor in political science at the University of Copenhagen. “From a White House perspective, this is probably the best result you could hope for.”
“If Trump can negotiate an agreement that gives the U.S. assurances that Greenland will not open up its society to Chinese bases, Chinese mines or Russian influence, then it’s sort of under control. And then Trump can… say that he has gained access to minerals.”
Greenland has been a formal part of Denmark since 1953. In 1979 it gained some autonomy, although Copenhagen still controls foreign affairs, defence and monetary policy and contributes nearly $1 billion annually to the economy.
The island won the right to seek full independence through a referendum in 2009, but so far has chosen not to do so, on concerns over the economy’s ability to be self-sufficient.
A poll in January showed the majority of Greenlanders want independence but are divided as to how fast it should happen.
Denmark, which has seen relations with Greenland worsen in recent years due to revelations of historic wrongdoing by the former colonial ruler, congratulated the Democrats.
“The Danish government will await the results of the negotiations that will now take place in Greenland,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said the Democrat’s victory signalled a desire for continued cooperation between Nuuk and Copenhagen. “In difficult times we must stick together,” he told Danish broadcasters DR and TV2.
There was no immediate reaction from Washington.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen (C) celebrated into the night as it became clear his Democrats party had won the election
Greenland’s centre-right opposition has won a surprise general election victory – in a vote dominated by independence and US President Donald Trump’s pledge to take over the semi-autonomous territory.
The Democratic party, which favours a gradual approach to independence from Denmark – achieved around 30% of the vote, near-complete results show.
“Greenland needs us to stand together in a time of great interest from outside,” party leader Jens-Frederik Nielsen told local media. “There is a need for unity, so we will enter into negotiations with everyone.”
His party will now have to negotiate with other parties in order to form a coalition.
Greenland – the world’s biggest island, between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans – has been controlled by Denmark, nearly 3,000km (1,860 miles) away, for about 300 years.
Greenland governs its own domestic affairs, but decisions on foreign and defence policy are made in Copenhagen.
Five of the six main parties in the election favour independence from Copenhagen, but disagree over the pace with which to reach it.
Greenland’s election: Why does it matter and how does it work?
Greenland’s vote pivotal for Arctic territory’s future
Why does Trump want Greenland?
The Democratic party, whose vote was up by more than 20% on 2021, is considered a moderate party on independence.
Another opposition party, Naleraq, which is looking to immediately kick off the independence process and forge closer ties with the US, is on course for second place with almost a quarter of the vote.
Support for Naleraq was boosted ahead of the vote by the decision of one of Greenland’s most popular young politicians, Aki-Matilda Hoegh-Dam, to switch from one of the ruling parties. She came second only to Democrats leader Jens Frederik Nielsen in the popular vote.
“It’s the second biggest party, so you can’t avoid them,” Nielsen told local reporters. “But we don’t want to rule out the other parties beforehand.”
The two current governing parties, Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) and Siumut, are heading for third and fourth place – marking an upset for Prime Minister Mute B Egede.
More than 40,000 Greenlanders out of a population of 57,000 were eligible to cast their votes to elect 31 MPs, as well as the local government. Six parties were on the ballot.
The voting took place at 72 polling stations scattered across the vast island.
“The Democrats need a supporting partner to be able to have a majority,” says Maria Ackren from the University of Greenland. “It would say it can be either Naleraq or Inuit Ataqatigiit. It’s up to the Democrats to try to figure out what they want.”
Since 2009 Greenland has had the right to call an independence referendum.
Although Naleraq is pushing for a vote within a few years, Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s party favours a gradual approach towards independence, focusing first on making self-government a success.
Prof Ackren believes the Democrats won, partly because Greenlanders wanted a change of government, but also because they were unhappy with new fisheries laws and other domestic issues.
Independence is seen as the end goal for most Greenlanders, but not before reforms have been made to the economy, health and other sectors, she says.
Greenland’s strategic location and untapped mineral resources have caught President Trump’s eye in particular. He first floated the idea of buying the island during his first term in 2019.
Since taking office again in January, Trump has reiterated his intention to acquire the territory.
Millions of Americans could see the cost of medicines shoot up if Trump imposes tariffs on Indian drugs
With Donald Trump’s tit-for-tat tariffs on India looming next month, millions of Americans may have to brace for steeper medical bills.
Last week, Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal made an unscheduled trip to the US for discussions with officials, hoping to strike a trade deal.
It followed Trump’s announcement that he would impose tariffs – which are government taxes on foreign imports – on India by 2 April, in retaliation to India’s tariffs on American goods.
Goyal wants to stave off tax increases on India’s critical export industries like medicinal drugs.
Nearly half of all unbranded medicines taken in the US come from India alone. Generic drugs – which are cheaper versions of brand-name medications – imported from countries like India make up nine out of 10 prescriptions in the US.
This saves Washington billions in healthcare costs. In 2022 alone, the savings from Indian generics amounted to a staggering $219bn (£169bn), according to a study by consulting firm IQVIA.
Without a trade deal, Trump’s tariffs could make some Indian generics unviable, forcing companies to exit part of the market and exacerbating existing drug shortages, experts say.
Tariffs could “worsen the demand-supply imbalances” and the uninsured and poor will be left counting the costs, says Dr Melissa Barber, a drug costing expert from Yale University.
The effects could be felt across people suffering from a range of health conditions.
Over 60% of prescriptions for hypertension and mental health ailments in the US were filled with Indian-made drugs, according to the IQVIA study funded by the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA).
Sertraline, the most prescribed antidepressant in the US, is a prominent example of how dependent Americans are on Indian supplies for essential drugs.
Many of them cost half as much as for those from non-Indian companies.
“We are worried about this,” says Peter Maybarduk, a lawyer at Public Citizens, a consumer advocacy group fighting for access to medicines. One in four American patients already fail to take medicines due to their costs, he adds.
Trump is already reportedly facing pressure from US hospitals and generic drugmakers because of his tariffs on Chinese imports.
The raw materials for 87% of the drugs sold in the US are located outside the country and primarily concentrated in China which fulfils around 40% of global supply.
With tariffs on Chinese imports rising 20% since Trump took office, the cost of raw materials for drugs have already gone up.
Trump wants companies to shift manufacturing to the US to avoid his tariffs.
Big pharma giants like Pfizer and Eli Lily, that sell brand name and patented drugs, have said they are committing to move some manufacturing there.
But the economics for low-value drugs do not add up.
Dilip Shanghvi, chairman of India’s largest drugmaker Sun Pharma, told an industry gathering last week that his company sells pills for between $1 and $5 per bottle in the US and tariffs “do not justify relocating our manufacturing to the US”.
“Manufacturing in India is at least three to four times cheaper than in the US,” says Sudarshan Jain of the IPA.
Any quick relocation will be next to impossible. Building a new manufacturing facility can cost up to $2bn and take five to 10 years before it is operational, according to lobby group PhRMA.
For local pharma players in India, the tariff blow could be brutal too.
The pharmaceutical sector is India’s largest industrial export according to GTRI, a trade research agency.
India exports some $12.7bn worth of drugs to the US annually, paying virtually no tax. US drugs coming into India, however, pay 10.91% in duties.
This leaves a “trade differential” of 10.9%. Any reciprocal tariffs by the US would increase the costs for both generic medicines and specialty drugs, according to GTRI.
It flags up pharmaceuticals as one of the sectors that is most vulnerable to price increases in the US market.
Indian firms which largely sell generic drugs already work on thin margins and won’t be able to afford a steep tax outgo.
They sell at much lower prices compared to competing peers, and have steadily gained dominance across cardiovascular, mental health, dermatology and women’s health drugs in the world’s largest pharma market.
“We can offset single-digit tariff hikes with cost cuts, but anything higher will have to be passed down to consumers,” the finance head of a top Indian drugmaker who didn’t want to be identified, told the BBC.
North America is their biggest revenue source, contributing a third of the earnings and profitability of most companies.
“It is the fastest growing market and most crucial. Even if we increase exposure to other markets, it will not adjust for any loss in the US market,” the finance head said.
Umang Vohra, CEO of India’s third-largest drug firm Cipla, said at a public gathering recently that tariffs should not ultimately dictate what businesses do, “because there is a risk that four years later, those tariffs may go away”.
But four years is a long time, and could make or break the fortunes of several companies.
Pakistan’s army says it has freed more than 300 hostages from a passenger train seized by militants in Balochistan province on Tuesday.
The military spokesperson said 33 militants were killed during the operation.
Twenty-one civilian hostages and four military personnel were killed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) before the operation began, the military spokesperson said. These numbers have not been verified by the BBC.
The military continues its search operation in the area to rule out any remaining threats.
There were approximately 440 passengers on board the train when it was attacked, according to the army’s spokesperson.
Security officials have been quoted as saying some of the militants may have left the train, taking an unknown number of passengers with them into the surrounding mountainous area.
The military is working to find the passengers who escaped and fled into the surrounding area during the attack, the spokesperson said. It is not clear how many passengers are unaccounted for.
The Pakistani authorities – as well as several Western countries, including the UK and US – have designated the BLA as a terrorist organisation.
The BLA is one of the rebel groups demanding either greater autonomy or independence for Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province.
They accuse Islamabad of exploiting the province’s rich mineral resources while also neglecting it. In the past, they have attacked military camps, railway stations and trains – but this is the first time they have hijacked a train.
At least 100 of those on the train were members of the security forces, officials have said.
The militants had threatened to kill hostages if authorities did not release Baloch political prisoners within 48 hours, according to local reports.
During the attack, the militants blew up a section of the tracks and opened fire on the train near a mountain tunnel.
Eyewitnesses described the “doomsday scenes” on board the train as the attack unfolded, with passenger Ishaq Noor telling the BBC: “We held our breath throughout the firing, not knowing what would happen next.”
Officials had difficulty communicating with passengers at the time of the attack, because the remote area has no internet or mobile coverage.
Some passengers who managed to disembark from the train late on Tuesday evening walked for nearly four hours to reach the next railway station.
Michelle Obama revealed one of the qualities about her husband, Barack Obama, that has gotten on her nerves over the years.
“Barack, you know, he had to adjust to what on time was for me,” the former first lady, 61, told her brother, Craig Robinson, on Wednesday’s premiere episode of their podcast, “IMO.”
“Because he was on that island time,” Robinson, 62, added about Barack’s lack of punctuality, referencing his brother-in-law’s Hawaiian roots.
Michelle recalled how “when it’s time to leave,” she would notice her spouse “getting up and going to the bathroom,” and doing other things that could make them late.
Michelle Obama revealed on her podcast, “IMO,” Wednesday that her husband Barack Obama’s lack of punctuality is one of her pet peeves.“He had to adjust to what on time was for me,” the former first lady shared. CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
“I was like, ‘Dude, a 3 o’clock departure means you’ve done all that,’ you know, it’s like, don’t start looking for your glasses at the 3 o’clock departure,” she added.
However, Michelle gave Barack kudos for working on this flaw, saying, “He’s improved over 30 years of marriage, but that was a ‘you must adjust.’”
The “Becoming” author said their daughters — Malia Obama, 26, and Sasha Obama, 23 — know their mom likes to be on time, and so they’re “early” whenever they’re “doing anything” with her.
“They’ve learned how to snap to it,” the mom of two added.
Michelle vented that Barack would often go to the bathroom or look for items when it was time to leave the house. Getty Images for Live Nation
Michelle’s candid disclosure about Barack, 63, comes as the couple tries to quiet separation rumors.
There have been rumblings of marital strife for a few months, with insiders telling Page Six in January that Michelle has “checked out” of her life in Washington, DC, is “fed up with the political circus” and “pretending everything is OK with Barack all the time.”
A source who worked closely with the pair added at the time, “They don’t pretend that they have this Camelot relationship. They’re not trying to present that they’re this magical couple.”
Barack has also been spotted on at least three occasions without his wife, further fueling the rumor mill.
Michelle did not attend former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in early January because she was reportedly on an “extended holiday vacation.”
Barack then went to a private dinner in DC alone later that month and attended President Trump’s inauguration without her. He was the only former president without his spouse at the ceremony.
A source told Page Six at the time that Michelle’s absence at the inauguration had to do with Trump, 78, adding that she is not “phony.”
“She showed up reluctantly for the election. They were united, but she doesn’t have to unify around [Trump]. She doesn’t have to say anything. Her absence speaks volumes,” the insider said.
The same business leaders who are publicly cordial to Donald Trump—even to his face—privately bemoan the havoc the president’s policies are wreaking on the American economy, according to a report.
When news broke on Tuesday that a livid Trump had doubled tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum from 25 to 50 percent, dozens of top corporate executives at the Yale CEO Caucus broke into groans and incredulous laughter, The Wall Street Journal reported.
If the northern ally didn’t roll back its electricity surcharge, Trump also vowed to “permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada.” (Both sides eventually backed off.)
The invite-only summit was organized by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale University’s business school. Its attendees included corporate bigwigs such as JPMogran Chase’s Jamie Dimon, billionaire Michael Dell, and Pfizer chief Albert Bourla.
“There was universal revulsion against the Trump economic policies,” Sonnenfeld told the Journal. “They’re also especially horrified about Canada.”
Nevertheless, when many of the same CEOs attended a question-and-answer session with Trump later that same day for Business Roundtable, there was not even a hint of confrontation. Despite the stock market’s recent nosedive, the executives lobbed softballs.
In an ad hoc poll at the Yale event, the CEOs agreed that they would need to see an even more precipitous decline before they publicly questioned Trump. About half of the room said the market would have to fall 20 percent before they spoke out, while around a quarter put the figure at 30 percent, the Journal reported. A quarter responded that they didn’t see it as their role to take a public stand on economic issues.
“I’ve been struck by how fearful people are and how unwilling they are to speak out. That has just not been true in the past,” Bill George, ex-CEO of the medical-device company Medtronic, told the Journal. “They don’t want to get on the wrong side of the president and his constituents.”
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks after signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on March 06, 2025 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty Images
Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly had one stark warning to share Wednesday: “If the U.S. can do this to us, their closest friend, then nobody is safe.”
During a press conference addressing President Donald Trump’s recent tariff retaliation against the country, Joly reiterated that Canada is “holding strong” and described the president’s actions as a “day to day fight.”
“We have done nothing to justify Trump’s attacks on our country, on our economy and our identity,” Joly said. “Canada is your best friend, best neighbor and best ally.”
“The only constant in this unjustifiable trade war seems to be President Trump’s talks of annexing our country through economic coercion,” she continued. “He called our border a fictional line and repeated his disrespectful 51st state rhetoric. Well, Canadians have made it very clear that we will not back down, and we will not give in to this coercion.”
The foreign affairs minister went on to reflect on the long-established history and relationship between America and Canada, which she described as “the envy of the world,” and called for the American public to contact their elected representatives to send “a message to the White House” and put an end to the tariff sparring match.
Joly is slated to meet Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week at a G7 meeting in Quebec. When asked by reporters Wednesday if U.S.-Canada relations would be on the meeting’s agenda, Rubio replied, “We’re going to be focused in G7 on all of those things. That’s what the meeting is about.”
“It is not a meeting about how we’re going to take over Canada,” he continued.
The president imposed a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports from Canada this week, and so far seems to be going full speed ahead toward his reciprocal tariff deadline on April 2 which will see a 25% tariff on another handful of goods from the country.
The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart has a single moving part – a levitated rotor that’s held in place by magnets. BiVACOR
An Australian man lived for 100 days with an artificial titanium heart while he awaited a donor transplant, the longest period to date of someone with the technology.
The patient, a man in his 40s who declined to be identified, received the implant during surgery at St. Vincent’s Hospital Sydney last November.
In February, he became the first person worldwide to leave hospital with the device, which kept him alive until a heart donor became available earlier this month.
According to a statement issued Wednesday by St Vincent’s Hospital, Monash University and BiVACOR, the US-Australian company behind the device, the man, who had severe heart failure, was “recovering well.”
The ability of the device to sustain him for so long is being celebrated as a sign the artificial heart could potentially offer a long-term option for people suffering heart failure. The device is still being trialed and has not yet been approved for general use.
BiVACOR’s founder, Australian bioengineer Daniel Timms, who invented the device following his father’s death from heart disease, said it was “exhilarating to see decades of work come to fruition.”
“The entire BiVACOR team is deeply grateful to the patient and his family for placing their trust in our Total Artificial Heart,” he said in the statement. “Their bravery will pave the way for countless more patients to receive this lifesaving technology.”
How it works
The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH) has a single moving part, a levitated rotor that’s held in place by magnets. As the name suggests, it’s constructed from titanium and there are no valves or mechanical bearings that may be susceptible to wear.
It pumps blood to the body and the lungs, replacing both ventricles of a failing heart.
Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally killing around 18 million people each year, according to the World Health Organization.
The long-term ambition is to use the device to save more people who languish on waiting lists for suitable donors. According to the US Health Department, about 3,500 people received heart transplants in 2024. Around 4,400 joined the waiting list the same year.
Professor Chris Hayward, from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, said the BiVACOR heart ushered in “a whole new ball game for heart transplants.”
“Within the next decade we will see the artificial heart becoming the alternative for patients who are unable to wait for a donor heart or when a donor heart is simply not available,” said Hayward, who is overseeing the Australian patient’s recovery and was involved in preparing the device for clinical trials.
The device has already been tested in the Food and Drug Administration’s Early Feasibility Study in the United States, which saw five patients successfully implanted with the device.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta got an exclusive look into a top secret facility where they genetically modify pigs to be used for human organ donors.
A new study warns parents to keep kids under four from drinking slush ice drinks that contain glycerol, an additive used to maintain the slushy texture in sugar-free versions.
Glycerol can trigger toxic effects in young children, leading to drowsiness, dangerously low blood sugar, and metabolic imbalances.
The study, published Tuesday in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, reviewed the cases of 21 children, with an average age of 3 years and 6 months, who fell ill within an hour of drinking a slushie.
Nearly all of the children in the study — 94% — experienced a drop in consciousness, 95% had dangerously low blood sugar, and 94% developed a buildup of acid in the body. Other symptoms included low potassium levels, excessive fat levels in the blood, and high levels of glycerol in the urine.
“High levels of glycerol caused a toxic phenomenon in children called glycerol intoxication syndrome,” Dr. Ellen Crushell, one of the study’s authors and a metabolic pediatrician at Children’s Health in Dublin, Ireland, told ABC News.
A young girl holds a slush. Rafael Ben-ari/Getty Images
However, Crushell stressed that not all icy drinks contain glycerol but it is most likely found in sugar-free varieties. And the drinks aren’t likely to be a cause of concern when consumed in moderation.
Crushell said the children were so sick they were referred for genetic testing because the pediatricians in the emergency departments suspected a metabolic disorder. Most of them came into the emergency room unconscious, she said. One child had a seizure.
Glycerol is a sugar alcohol naturally found in fats and oils that is used as a sugar replacement. Besides slushie drinks, it is sometimes added to various other foods such as protein bars and shakes, dried fruit, chewing gum, and sugar-free candies.
When consumed, it is rapidly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract and spread throughout the body’s water stores. In large amounts, it can lead to excessive water retention and cause digestive issues such as bloating, gas, and diarrhea.
The study suggests that young children may be more vulnerable to glycerol’s effects because their smaller body size and developing metabolism make it harder for them to process and clear the compound efficiently.
“Slush ice drinks have contained a lot of glycerol instead of sugar in recent years due to the increased demand for sugar-free food,” Crushell explained. “To maintain the slush, you need either sugar or glycerol, but due to public health concerns and a sugar tax, sugar was reduced and glycerol was added.”
Parents should watch for any signs of drowsiness or reduced consciousness, slurring of speech, nausea, or general sickness after a child has downed a slushie drink, Crushell said.
“If parents suspect that their child is becoming unwell, the first thing they should do is to stop them from drinking any more of the drink,” she advised.
Crushell also recommended giving the child something sugary to eat and seeking medical attention if they have a reaction.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which claimed responsibility for the attack, blew up the railway track and fired rockets at the Jaffar Express on Tuesday.
Pakistani soldiers arrive at the railway station to assist victims and survivors rescued by security forces from a train attacked by insurgents in Quetta, Pakistan, Wednesday, March 12, 2025. (AP)
The tense silence inside the Jaffar Express ended in a barrage of gunfire as Pakistani security forces stormed the hijacked train on Wednesday, killing all 33 separatist militants and rescuing hundreds of passengers.
The day-long standoff, marked by explosions and hostage threats, began when Baloch militants attacked the train in Balochistan, demanding the release of prisoners.
As special forces moved in, militants wearing suicide vests sat among terrified passengers. In a final planned assault, commandos eliminated the attackers. However, the ordeal left 21 passengers and four security personnel dead.
“Today, we rescued many people, including women and children. The final operation was executed with utmost caution,” Pakistan military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry told reporters. He added that no civilians were killed in the final stage of the operation.
The Baloch Liberation Army, which claimed responsibility for the attack, blew up the railway track and fired rockets at the Jaffar Express on Tuesday.
The train, carrying 440 passengers, was travelling from Quetta in Balochistan to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa when it was targeted.
Before the army’s announcement, the Baloch Liberation Army claimed to have killed 50 passengers on Wednesday evening. On Tuesday, it said it was holding 214 people, mostly security personnel.
The group had warned that it would begin executing hostages if authorities failed to meet its 48-hour deadline to release Baloch political prisoners, activists, and those it claimed were abducted by the military.
The BLA is the largest of several ethnic armed groups fighting the government in Balochistan, a region bordering Afghanistan and Iran.
In recent months, the militants have intensified their attacks, adopting new tactics to cause heavy casualties and strike at Pakistan’s military.
HAUNTING footage captured the moment blood-red water flooded a beach popular with tourists, freaking out confused onlookers.
The popular Silver and Red Beach on Hormuz Island saw scenes of horror, as its mineral-rich coast was soaked by heavy rainfall which caused a bizarre phenomenon.
Tourists gathered at the Silver and Red Beach on Hormuz Island to marvel at its colourCredit: instagram/@hormoz_omid/Millions of viewers watched the Biblical scenes on “rainbow island” – a largely uninhabited and quiet island which is miles away from Iran’s mainland.
One user said: “The power of God …. How beautiful and amazing.”
The frightening yet unique scenes are a year-round attraction at the coast, caused by the high iron oxide content in the volcanic soil.
These minerals mix with the heavy tide to give the shoreline a bright red colour, which looks as if someone has dropped a large bucket or red paint in the sea.
The rich volcanic soil is also known as “gelack” soil, and has industrial purposes, as it is used in dyeing, cosmetics, glass and ceramics.
It also plays an important role in local cuisine, with natives using it in sauces and jams.
The Iran Tourism and Touring Organisation says on its tourist board: “Walking along the shore you will encounter parts where sand glitters with metal compounds, especially mesmerising at sunset or sunrise.
This bizarre ‘blood rain’ phenomenon sees landscape washed in red by heavy rainCredit: instagram/@hormoz_omid/
“The soil colour around you keeps changing as you walk or ride and you can visit a unique red edible soil and other 70 colourful minerals in Hormuz Island.”
Last year, separate videos wrongly claimed that the same beaches had turned red due to severe weather.
Tourists, however, can experience the rare phenomenon any time of year, in any weather.
Scenes like this are not unique to Iran.
In Torrevieja, Spain, there is a strange pink lake that owes its colour to an unusual bacteria in the salt.
And in the UK, thousands of tiny bio-luminescent plankton could be seen emitting light when being disturbed by waves.
This made the shore of the Sheerness Beach in Kent light up a glowing electric blue.
The former Chicago mayor is already on the hustings, finding new ways to attack Trumpism from the center.
Rahm Wants to Run.
Yes, that Rahm. And, yes, for that office — the presidency.
“I’ve only been back two months, I have no idea what I’m doing,” Rahm I. Emanuel, operative-turned-politician-turned-diplomat told me before adding his stock line since returning from serving as ambassador to Japan. “I’m not done with public service and I’m hoping public service is not done with me.”
Ignore that evasion. Rahm Emanuel is voting with his feet.
Since coming home in January from his stint in Tokyo — a job he repurposed to be American envoy to all of Asia — Emanuel has been as visible as any other Democrat. Never mind that he currently holds no office and hasn’t been on a ballot for a decade.
Name the political podcast and Emanuel has likely been on it or will be shortly. He immediately snagged a CNN contract and regular Washington Post column, no small accomplishment for a former official at a moment of retrenchment for news organizations.
He’s also hitting the lecture circuit, appearing for paid and gratis gigs before audiences such as the Realtors and the Chicago Economic Club. Emanuel is pointedly avoiding Ivy League campuses and later this month will make his first stop on a service academy tour when he speaks at West Point.
Just as striking is to talk to anybody in high-level Democratic politics who knows Emanuel — which is to say most everyone — and hear how matter of fact they are about the inevitability of his candidacy.
The biggest Rahm-may-run tell, though, is that he’s already road-testing the first outlines of a stump speech, or at least an issue he can make his own.
I caught it last month when he came to Washington to appear before a conference held by Democracy Forward, a liberal group helping to lead litigation efforts against the Trump administration.
“I am done with the discussion of locker rooms, I am done with the discussion of bathrooms and we better start having a conversation about the classroom,” Emanuel said, drawing applause as he alluded to a new study showing more than two-thirds of eighth graders can’t read at grade level.
He kept coming back to the study and eventually and explicitly tied the policy to the politics, in Rahm’ian fashion.
“We can lead a discussion and force a topic onto the agenda of this country that’s worthy of having a debate about,” Emanuel said about the dismal student data. Unlike, say, the fate of a heretofore obscure federal agency, whose demise dominated elite coverage in the first weeks of Trump’s presidency. “The New York Times put crumbs all the way to the front door of the USAID headquarters and we just walked along back there,” he lamented of his party.
Shortly after his trip to Washington, Emanuel dashed out to Los Angeles to appear on Bill Maher’s show, where he went even further for a less sober audience.
“In seventh grade, if I had known I could’ve said the word ‘they’ and gotten in the girls’ bathroom, I would’ve done it,” he said. “We literally are a superpower, we’re facing off against China with 1.4 billion people and two-thirds of our children can’t read eighth grade level.”
There it all was, in two appearances.
There were the assets.
Emanuel’s gift for finding a towering issue hidden in plain view; his tactical skills for grasping the political benefits it could confer, delivered with a snappy sound bite to elevate statistics off the page; linking domestic policy to geopolitics and sending a message about another, more controversial topic; and not merely urging Democrats to move on from trans youth issues, but using them as a vehicle to shift the conversation to ground he, and most in his party, would prefer to fight on. Gavin, are you listening?
Major trade partners swiftly hit back at President Donald Trump’s increased tariffs on aluminum and steel imports, imposing stiff new taxes on U.S products from textiles and water heaters to beef and bourbon.
Canada, the largest supplier of steel and aluminum to the U.S., said Wednesday it will place 25% reciprocal tariffs on steel products and also raise taxes on a host of items: tools, computers and servers, display monitors, sports equipment, and cast-iron products.
Across the Atlantic, the European Union will raise tariffs on American beef, poultry, bourbon and motorcycles, bourbon, peanut butter and jeans.
Combined, the new tariffs will cost companies billions of dollars, and further escalate the uncertainty in two of the world’s major trade partnerships. Companies will either take the losses and earn fewer profits, or, more likely, pass costs along to consumers in the form of higher prices.
Prices will go up, in Europe and the United States, and jobs are at stake, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“We deeply regret this measure. Tariffs are taxes. They are bad for business, and even worse for consumers,” von der Leyen said.
The EU duties aim for pressure points in the U.S. while minimizing additional damage to Europe. EU officials have made clear that the tariffs — taxes on imports — are aimed at products made in Republican-held states, such as beef and poultry from Kansas and Nebraska and wood products from Alabama and Georgia. The tariffs will also hit blue states such as Illinois, the No. 1 U.S. producer of soybeans, which are also on the list.
Spirits producers have become collateral damage in the dispute over steel and aluminum. The EU move “is deeply disappointing and will severely undercut the successful efforts to rebuild U.S. spirits exports in EU countries,” said Chris Swonger, head of the Distilled Spirits Council. The EU is a major destination for U.S. whiskey, with exports surging 60% in the past three years after an earlier set of tariffs was suspended.
Could there be an agreement that takes increasing tariffs off the table?
Von der Leyen said in a statement that the EU “will always remain open to negotiation.”
Canada’s incoming Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday he’s ready to meet with Trump if he shows “respect for Canadian sovereignty″ and is willing to take ”a common approach, a much more comprehensive approach for trade.″
Carney, who will be sworn in Friday, said workers in both countries will be better off when “the greatest economic and security partnership in the world is renewed, relaunched. That is possible.”
“We firmly believe that in a world fraught with geopolitical and economic uncertainties, it is not in our common interest to burden our economies with tariffs,” she said.
The American Chamber of Commerce to the EU said the U.S. tariffs and EU countermeasures “will only harm jobs, prosperity and security on both sides of the Atlantic.” “The two sides must de-escalate and find a negotiated outcome urgently,” the chamber said Wednesday.
What will actually happen?
Trump slapped similar tariffs on EU steel and aluminum during his first term in office, which enraged European and other allies. The EU also imposed countermeasures in retaliation at the time, raising tariffs on U.S.-made motorcycles, bourbon, peanut butter and jeans, among other items.
This time, the EU action will involve two steps. First on April 1, the commission will reimpose taxes that were in effect from 2018 and 2020, but which were suspended under the Biden administration. Then on April 13 come the additional duties targeting 18 billion euros ($19.6 billion) in U.S. exports to the bloc.
EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič traveled to Washington last month in an effort to head off the tariffs, meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other top trade officials.
He said on Wednesday that it became clear during the trip “that the EU is not the problem.”
“I argued to avoid the unnecessary burden of measures and countermeasures, but you need a partner for that. You need both hands to clap,” Šefčovič told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
Canada is imposing, as of 12:01 a.m. Thursday 25% reciprocal tariffs on steel products worth $12.6 billion Canadian (US$8.7 billion) and aluminum products worth $3 billion Canadian (US$2 billion) as well as additional imported U.S. goods worth $14.2 billion Canadian ($9.9 billion) for a total of $29.8 billion (US$20.6 billion.)
The list of additional products affected by counter-tariffs includes tools, computers and servers, display monitors, water heaters, sport equipment, and cast-iron products.
US representative Melanie Stansbury before Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on 4 March 2025. Photograph: Win McNamee/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock
The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.
Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.
The watchlist is part of the Civicus Monitor, which tracks developments in civic freedoms across 198 countries. Other countries that have previously been featured on the watchlist in recent years include Zimbabwe, Argentina, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.
Mandeep Tiwana, co-secretary general of Civicus, said that the watchlist “looks at countries where we remain concerned about deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”.
The selection process, the website states, incorporates insights and data from Civicus’s global network of research partners and data.
The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation”.
In the news release announcing the US’s addition, the organization cited recent actions taken by the Trump administration that they argue will likely “severely impact constitutional freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression, and association”.
The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalists in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid and the attempted dismantling of USAid.
The organization warned that these decisions “will likely impact civic freedoms and reverse hard-won human rights gains around the world”.
The group also pointed to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, and the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings, among others.
Civicus described Trump’s actions since taking office as an “unparalleled attack on the rule of law” not seen “since the days of McCarthyism in the twentieth century”, stating that these moves erode the checks and balances essential to democracy.
“Restrictive executive orders, unjustifiable institutional cutbacks, and intimidation tactics through threatening pronouncements by senior officials in the administration are creating an atmosphere to chill democratic dissent, a cherished American ideal,” Tiwana said.
In addition to the watchlist, the Civicus Monitor classifies the state of civic space in countries using five ratings: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed and closed.
Currently, the US has a “narrowed” rating, which it also had during the Biden administration, meaning that while citizens can exercise their civic freedom, such as rights to association, peaceful assembly and expression, occasional violations occur.
For part of Trump’s first term, Tiwana said, the US had been categorized as “obstructed”, due to the administration’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests and restrictive state laws that were enacted limiting the rights of environmental justice protesters, and other actions.
Under Joe Biden, the classification went back to “narrowed”, Tiwana, said, but as of Monday, the US has been placed on the watchlist as the group says it sees “significant deterioration” in civic freedoms occurring.
Tiwana noted that the US is again seemingly headed toward the “obstructed” category.
While the Trump administration often say they support fundamental freedoms and individual rights, like free speech, Tiwana believes that the administration seem “to be wanting to support these only for people who they see as agreeing with them”.
Historically, Tiwana said, the US has been “considered the beacon of democracy and defense of fundamental freedoms”.
“It was an important pillar of US foreign policy, even though it was imperfect, both domestically and how the US promoted it abroad,” he added.
Manchester United have unveiled plans for a new 100,000-seater stadium – the biggest in the country.
Minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been vocal about his desire for a new, state-of-the-art ground ever since he purchased almost 30% of the club in February last year.
United were previously examining whether to redevelop the historic Old Trafford but have now said they will build an entirely new stadium – next to the old one.
The planned stadium would become the largest in the UK – overtaking Wembley Stadium, which has a capacity of 90,000.
The project, undertaken in conjunction with a government regeneration task force chaired by Lord Sebastian Coe, has been developed by Foster + Partners.
It will replace one of the world’s most iconic football stadiums and redevelop the surrounding area.
During the construction process, United will continue to play at Old Trafford, Sky Sports News reported.
Pic: Foster + Partners/PA
During the announcement, Sir Jim said the ground would be the “world’s greatest” football stadium.
He added the new stadium would be built “next to the existing site”.
In a press release, United said the project could bring billions of pounds to the UK economy, create as many as 92,000 jobs and more than 17,000 new homes.
The stadium is estimated to cost £2bn and Omar Berrada, United chief executive, said he was confident they could attract investors.
Lord Foster, the architect and founder of Foster + Partners, said the stadium would only take five years to build as it would utilise prefabrication.
Offering further details about the stadium plans, Lord Foster said: “The stadium is contained by a vast umbrella, harvesting energy and rainwater, and sheltering a new public plaza that is twice the size of Trafalgar Square.”
However, when he was asked about a timeline, Sir Jim said it would also depend on the government’s regeneration efforts as well.
Leadership figures involved in the new stadium also stressed its wider benefits for the local area and its economy, as well as the wider North West.
“If we get this right, the regeneration impact could be bigger and better than London 2012,” Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, said.
While senior figures at United have been trying to sound upbeat about the club’s future, the men’s team has struggled on the pitch this season, languishing in the bottom half of the Premier League table.
Alongside that, under Sir Jim’s stewardship, there have been rounds of redundancies and cost-cutting measures.
On the evening before the stadium announcement, the British billionaire spoke in a round of interviews in which he tried to justify his actions so far and talk up the club’s future.
However, he also described some of his players as “not good enough” and admitted some were likely overpaid.
The billionaire chief of asset management firm BlackRock warned that the Trump administration’s nationalistic policies and deportation blitz could slash the agricultural workforce so much that crops could be left rotting in the ground.
Larry Fink, whose company fulfilled President Donald Trump’s Panama Canal takeover dreams by buying two ports at either end of the waterway, said the administration’s massive deportation push could lead to a massive shortage of farm workers as soon as the spring harvest season.
“I do believe deportations, in the speed at which it is happening, is going to have severe impact on the agricultural sector and the construction sector,” Fink said Tuesday at S&P Global’s CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, Texas. “I think we’re going to start seeing, especially when spring and the spring crops arrive, are we going to have enough workers to harvest the crops?”
Citing his conversations with other CEOs, Fink said about 70 percent of agriculture workers and 40 percent of construction workers were not born in the United States.
“You add that up and what’s going on?” he said. “With the whole idea that we’re going to have to use a private capital to build up this economy, are we going to have enough workers?”
The number of border crossers has plummeted to record lows since Trump suspended refugee admissions on his first day back in office—but February data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement obtained by NBC News showed that the government continues to fall short of the president’s promise to enact the largest deportation operation in American history.
Fink said a worker shortage would have elevated inflation “embedded” in it, though he foresees “big deflation” in the next few years thanks to the advancement of AI.
The billionaire also warned the Trump administration that its “America First” policy comes with a price.
“I think if we all are becoming a little more nationalistic—and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing—it does resonate with me that it’s going to have elevated inflation,” Fink said. “When I go to Washington, when they talk about these policies, at what cost are you willing to tolerate that?”
Though Fink is a lifelong Democrat, he recently delivered a big win for Trump.
Under a deal announced last week, BlackRock and other investors would spend over $22 billion to buy the Balboa and Cristobal ports in the Panama Canal from Hong Kong company CK Hutchison. BlackRock will also purchase CK Hutchison’s controlling interest in 43 other ports.
PRESIDENT Donald Trump bought a Tesla on the White House lawn on Tuesday in an outlandish display of support for CEO Elon Musk following recent backlash.
Musk brought an entire fleet of electric vehicles to the White House lawn to let the president have his pick of the litter for the purchase.
President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaking to the press inside a Tesla Model S at the White House on March 11Credit: AFP
Trump’s support for his advisor comes after Tesla faced backlash and vandalism over Musk’s new role in the Oval Office.
As the head of Trump’s brand new Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has slashed federal jobs and budgets in Trump’s first few months of his second term.
Growing fears and concerns over Doge’s plans have sparked a series of attacks on Tesla across the country, including vandalism at Tesla showrooms and charging stations.
Over the past few weeks, protestors have gathered at multiple Tesla locations as people carry signs and shout chants, lashing out at Musk for his role in the Trump administration.
The company is also facing dropping sales for the first time as Americans are boycotting the auto giant in what protestors are calling “Tesla takedowns.”
Tesla stock has lost more than half its stock since peaking in December – wiping out over $800 billion from the company’s total value, according to CNBC.
In the face of the backlash, the president announced on Tuesday morning that he would buy a Tesla as “a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American.”
In his Truth Social post, Trump accused leftists of trying to “illegally and collusively boycott Tesla.”
“The attacks on Elon by the radical left are not just attacks on him, but on this incredible American company and the workers who make these spectacular cars,” Trump said at the White House.
He said Musk has been treated “very unfairly by a very small group of people.”
He added that he plans to classify the attacks on dealerships as domestic terrorism.
On Tuesday afternoon, videos shared to X showed Trump walking next to at least four different Teslas, including a Cybertruck, arranged on the South Portico of the White House.
Musk’s son X Æ A-Xii also joined the Doge head while the powerful duo talked over Trump’s options.
While speaking at the White House, the billionaire also said Tesla will double its vehicle output in the US over the next two years.
Trump and Musk were seen smiling and chopping it up on the lawn as the two celebrated the big purchase by sitting in the cars and speaking to reporters.
The two men have a long and complicated relationship that initially started with a feud before boiling down into an apparent friendship.
Trump often speaks highly of Musk and even previously reversed his stance on electric vehicles due to their relationship.
The president appointed Musk as the head of Doge in November, just a week after winning the election, and hasn’t looked back.
FULL-FLEDGED PURCHASE
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt joked at a briefing on Tuesday that the president, a native New Yorker, was excited to drive again.
As the vehicles were being transported to the White House, Leavitt said it was a “very exciting moment.”
She insisted Trump would pay the full market price for the car.
Pictures from the White House showed Trump reviewing a handwritten note of Tesla’s pricing on his presidential stationary.
He has a choice between a silver Model X, a gray CT, a blue Model S, and a red Model Y, according to the sheet
A handwritten note at the bottom of the page said Teslas can be bought for as low as $299 a month or $35,000.
“All cars have self-driving, just needs to be turned on,” the note added.
On March 21, “The Union” star, 58, will officially enter menopause — defined as 12 months without a period — she revealed on former PIX11 anchor-turned-menopause advocate, Tamsen Fadal’s new podcast, “The Tamsen Show.”
Halle Berry and Tamsen Fadal talk menopause on Fadal’s new podcast Getty Images for
Berry’s feting the occasion with a “shiesta,” a term she’s been using to describe a celebration for women entering menopause.
“When a woman realizes that she’s in the menopause — you know, 365 days, and you know you’re in it — it is their duty to give that woman a ‘shiesta’ to celebrate her, like we do every other milestone in our life,” Berry said.
Berry is Fadal’s first guest on the podcast that launches on Wednesday.
We’re told the two women had a mutual love fest discussing womanhood, and their menopause journeys.
Berry, who also battles Type 2 diabetes, revealed she took control of that disease, and was able too wean herself off insulin and oral medication, so, “I thought I would skip menopause, whatever that was,” she half-jokingly told Fadal.
“There was a feeling of, ‘Hey, I can do pretty much anything I want to do if I eat right and exercise, and prioritize my health and well-being,” she explained.
She added that her healthy lifestyle made her feel immune to the inevitable. “I thought whatever menopause is — I don’t know much about it — but I’m sure I’m going to skip it, because I’m too healthy! I’m on top of everything,” she said.
Fadal and Berry are among several high-profile women making it part of their mission to educate women on the topic. Fadal told Page Six last year that entering menopause was the catalyst for her to leave the youth-obsessed TV news biz, and her job at New York’s PIX11, after 15 years at the anchor desk.
“The realization I needed to put my voice into this conversation led me to leave [TV news]. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do my job anymore, but I had a bigger story to tell. I couldn’t stop talking about it. I couldn’t stop studying it. I couldn’t stop talking to women about it,” she said.
She has since produced a documentary on the subject, “The (M) Factor Film,” as well as launched the podcast and penned the book, “How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before,” out March 25.
Rodrigo Duterte, seen here in October at a senate probe into the drug war during his administration, has been taken into police custody
Just short of his 80th birthday, Rodrigo Duterte, a man who once vowed to purge his country through a bloody anti-drugs and crime campaign, found himself outmanoeuvred and in custody.
The former president was met by Philippines police as he arrived in Manila on a flight from Hong Kong, where he had been rallying support for his candidates for the upcoming mid-term election among the large Filipino diaspora there.
The much-talked-about warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court (ICC) was, it turned out, already in the hands of the Philippines government, which moved swiftly to execute it.
A frail-looking Mr Duterte, walking with a stick, was moved to an air force base within the airport perimeter. A chartered jet was quickly prepared to take him to the ICC in The Hague.
How had this happened? How had a man so powerful and popular, often called “the Trump of Asia”, been brought so low?
In vain, his lawyers and family members protested that the arrest had no legal basis and complained that Duterte’s frail health was being neglected.
While in office, Mr Duterte formed an alliance with the Marcos family – the children of ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos who had long been working on a political comeback. Mr Duterte could not run again in the 2022 election, but his daughter Sara, mayor of southern city of Davao, was also popular and a strong contender to replace him.
However, Ferdinand Marcos’s son Bongbong, who had been in politics all his life, was also well placed to win and very well-funded.
The two families struck a deal. They would work together to get Bongbong into the presidency and Sara into the vice-presidency, on the assumption that come the next election in 2028, her turn would come and she would have the formidable Marcos machine behind her.
It worked. Both won their positions by a wide margin. Mr Duterte expected that his alliance would protect him from any blowback over his controversial presidency once he was out of power.
The most serious threat hanging over him was an investigation by the ICC into his culpability for thousands of extrajudicial killings carried out during anti-drugs campaigns he ordered – after he became president in 2016, but also during his tenure as mayor of the southern city of Davao from 2011.
Mr Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the jurisdiction of the ICC in 2019, but its prosecutors argued they still had a mandate to look into alleged crimes against humanity committed before that, and launched a formal investigation in 2021. However, President Marcos initially stated that his government would not co-operate with the ICC.
That position only changed after the dramatic breakdown of the Duterte-Marcos alliance. Strains in their relationship were evident from the earliest days of the administration, when Sara Duterte’s request to be given control of the powerful defence ministry was turned down and she was given the education ministry instead.
President Marcos also distanced himself from his predecessor’s mercurial policies, mending fences with the US, standing up to China in contested seas, and stopping the blood-curdling threats of retribution against drug dealers.
In the end, these were two ambitious, power-hungry clans aiming to dominate Filipino politics, and there was not enough power for them to share. Relations reached a nadir last year when Sara Duterte announced that she had hired an assassin to kill President Marcos, should anything happen to her.
Late last year, the lower house of Congress, which is controlled by Marcos loyalists, filed a petition to impeach Ms Duterte. That trial is due to take place in the Senate later this year.
If she is impeached, under the constitution, she would be barred from holding high political office, killing her long-standing presidential ambitions and weakening the political power of the Dutertes even further.
President Marcos now appears to have moved deftly to neutralise his main political rival. But his strategy is not risk-free. The Dutertes remain popular in much of the country, and may be able to mobilise protests against the former president’s prosecution.
Sara Duterte has issued a statement accusing the government of surrendering her father to “foreign powers” and of violating Filipino sovereignty.
An early test of the support enjoyed by both clans will be the mid-term elections in May.
In his comments to journalists after the plane carrying his predecessor had taken off from Manila, President Marcos insisted he was meeting the country’s commitments to Interpol, which had delivered the ICC warrant. But he was coy about the fact that it was an ICC warrant he was executing, given that many Filipinos will question what the ICC’s remit is in a country which has already left its jurisdiction.
It is not risk-free for the ICC either. The court is an embattled institution these days, with the Trump administration threatening to arrest its top officials should they travel to the US, and few countries willing to extradite those it has indicted. Getting former President Duterte to The Hague might therefore look like a welcome high-profile success.
Security forces have been sent to the scene, as well as helicopters to try to rescue hostages
Armed militants in Pakistan’s Balochistan region have attacked a train carrying more than 400 passengers and taken a number of them hostage, military sources told the BBC on Tuesday.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) fired at the Jaffar Express Train as it travelled from Quetta to Peshawar.
The separatist group said it had bombed the track before storming the train in the remote Sibi district, claiming the train was under its control.
At least 16 militants have been killed and 104 passengers rescued as of Wednesday morning, local media reported.
Among those rescued are 17 injured passengers, who have been hospitalised for treatment.
The militants had threatened to kill hostages if authorities did not release Baloch political prisoners within 48 hours, according to local reports.
The rescue operation is ongoing.
There were reports of “intense firing” at the train, a Balochistan government spokesman told local newspaper Dawn on Tuesday.
A senior police official said it “remains stuck just before a tunnel surrounded by mountains”, AFP news agency reports.
A senior army official confirmed to the BBC that there were more than 100 army personnel travelling from Quetta on the train.
The Pakistani authorities – as well as several Western countries, including the UK and US – have designated the BLA as a terrorist organisation.
It has waged a decades-long insurgency to gain independence and has launched numerous deadly attacks, often targeting police stations, railway lines and highways.
On Tuesday, the group warned of “severe consequences” if an attempt was made to rescue those it is holding.
“I can’t find the words to describe how we managed to escape. It was terrifying,” Muhammad Bilal, one of the freed hostages, told AFP news agency.
Allahditta, another passenger, said he was allowed to go because of his heart condition. The 49-year-old recalled how people “began hiding under the seats in panic” when the attackers stormed the train.
A local railway official in Quetta earlier told the BBC that a group of 80 passengers – 11 children, 26 women and 43 men – had managed to disembark the train and walk to the nearest railway station, Panir.
The official said the group was made up of locals from the province of Balochistan.
One man, whose brother-in-law was still being held on the train, described an agonising wait. He said he had tried to drive to the area, but many of the roads were closed.
Meanwhile, anxious families of passengers were trying to get information about their loved ones from the counter at Quetta railway station.
The son of one passenger, Muhammad Ashraf, who left Quetta for Lahore on Tuesday morning, told BBC Urdu he had not been able to contact his father.
Another relative said he was “frantic with worry” about his cousin and her small child, who were travelling from Quetta to Multan to pick up a family member.
“No one is telling me what’s happening or if they’re safe,” Imran Khan told Reuters news agency.
The fire is still burning on the Solong container ship, which was in a collision with the Stena Immaculate oil tanker in the Humber Estuary
The captain of a cargo ship has been arrested after it collided with an oil tanker in the North Sea.
The Portuguese-flagged Solong and the US-registered tanker Stena Immaculate crashed off the East Yorkshire coast at about 10:00 GMT on Monday.
Humberside Police said the 59-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter following searches for a missing crew member of the Solong.
Smoke is continuing to billow from the Solong, but Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said both ships were expected to remain afloat.
German firm Ernst Russ, which owns the Solong, confirmed to the BBC that the man arrested is the master of the ship.
It said he, along with the rest of the crew, were assisting the investigation.
A crew member from the cargo ship was still missing and presumed dead after a search and rescue operation ended on Monday evening, according to Transport Minister Mike Kane.
Whitehall sources have told the BBC there were Russians and Filipinos among the crew of the Solong.
The BBC understands all 23 crew on board the Stena Immaculate are Americans. They are all in Grimsby and are likely to be repatriated in due course.
Police said they had begun a criminal investigation into the cause of the collision and was working with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
The Marine Accident Investigation Branch was also undertaking a parallel preliminary assessment to establish the causes of the crash, police said.
HM Coastguard confirmed 36 people had been taken safely to shore.
Det Ch Supt Craig Nicholson said: “Humberside Police have taken primacy for the investigation of any potential criminal offences which arise from the collision between the two vessels.”
He said the arrested man was in custody.
“Following inquiries undertaken by my team, we have arrested a 59-year-old man on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in connection with the collision.
“This follows the conclusion of search operations by HM Coastguard for the missing crew member of the Solong.
“Our thoughts are with the family of the missing crew member, and I have appointed family liaison officers to make contact and provide support to the family.”
Smoke is continuing to billow from Solong.
The ship’s German owner, Ernst Russ, said it was supporting the missing crew member’s family.
It also confirmed there were no containers on board carrying sodium cyanide, as had been initially feared.
“There are four empty containers that have previously contained the hazardous chemical and these containers will continue to be monitored,” the firm said.
Crowley, the maritime company managing Stena Immaculate, said the vessel was struck by Solong while anchored off the coast of Hull, causing “multiple explosions” on board and an unknown quantity of jet fuel to be released.
The firm said Stena Immaculate was carrying 220,000 barrels of jet fuel in 16 segregated cargo tanks, at least one of which was ruptured when it was struck.
Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness, said officials had told him there was no evidence so far of any of the heavy engine oil leaking from either ship, or pollution in the water or the air.
The Trump administration lifted its suspension of military aid and intelligence sharing for Ukraine, and Kyiv signaled that it was open to a 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia, pending Moscow’s agreement, American and Ukrainian officials said Tuesday following talks in Saudi Arabia.
The administration’s decision marked a sharp shift from only a week ago, when it imposed the measures in an apparent effort to push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to enter talks to end the war with invading Russian forces. The suspension of U.S. assistance came days after Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump argued about the conflict in a tense White House meeting.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who led the U.S. delegation to the talks in Jeddah, said Washington would present the ceasefire offer to the Kremlin, which has so far opposed anything short of a permanent end to the conflict without accepting any concessions.
“We’re going to tell them this is what’s on the table. Ukraine is ready to stop shooting and start talking. And now it’ll be up to them to say yes or no,” Rubio told reporters after the talks. “If they say no, then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here.”
Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, added: “The Ukrainian delegation today made something very clear, that they share President Trump’s vision for peace.”
Tuesday’s discussions, which lasted for nearly eight hours, appeared to put to rest — for the moment at least — the animosity between Trump and Zelenskyy that erupted during the Oval Office meeting last month.
Waltz said the negotiators “got into substantive details on how this war is going to permanently end,” including long-term security guarantees. And, he said, Trump agreed to immediately lift the pause in the supply of billions of dollars of U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing.
Trump said he hoped that an agreement could be solidified “over the next few days.”
“I’ve been saying that Russia’s been easier to deal with so far than Ukraine, which is not supposed to be the way it is,” Trump said later Tuesday. “But it is, and we hope to get Russia. But we have a full ceasefire from Ukraine. That’s good.”
The Kremlin had no immediate comment on the U.S. and Ukrainian statements. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said only that negotiations with U.S. officials could take place this week.
Trump ‘s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is expected to travel later this week to Moscow, where he could meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. The person cautioned that scheduling could change.
Officials met in Saudi Arabia only hours after Russia shot down over 300 Ukrainian drones in Ukraine’s biggest attack since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion. Neither U.S. nor Ukrainian officials offered any comment on the barrage.
Russia also launched 126 drones and a ballistic missile at Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, as part of Moscow’s relentless pounding of civilian areas.
Zelenskyy renews calls for lasting peace
In an address posted shortly after Tuesday’s talks ended, Zelenskyy reiterated Ukraine’s commitment to a lasting peace, emphasizing that the country has sought an end to the war since its outset.
“Our position is absolutely clear: Ukraine has strived for peace from the very first second of this war, and we want to do everything possible to achieve it as soon as possible — securely and in a way that ensures war does not return,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak, who led the Ukrainian delegation, described the negotiations as positive. He said the two countries “share the same vision, and that we are moving in the same direction toward the just peace long awaited by all Ukrainians.”
In Kyiv, Lena Herasymenko, a psychologist, accepts that compromises will be necessary to end the war, but she said they must be “reasonable.”
“We had massive losses during this war, and we don’t know yet how much more we’ll have,” she told The Associated Press. “We are suffering every day. Our kids are suffering, and we don’t know how the future generation will be affected.”
Oleksandr, a Ukrainian soldier who could give only his first name because of security restrictions, warned that Ukraine cannot let down its guard.
“If there is a ceasefire, it would only give Russia time to increase its firepower, manpower, missiles and other arms. Then they would attack Ukraine again,” he said.
Hawkish Russians push back against a ceasefire
In Moscow, hawkish politicians and military bloggers spoke strongly against a prospective ceasefire, arguing that it would play into Kyiv’s hands and damage Moscow’s interests at a time when the Russian military has the advantage.
“A ceasefire isn’t what we need,” wrote hardline ideologue Alexander Dugin.
Over 340 Ukrainian drones downed in multiple regions across Russia
Viktor Sobolev, a retired general who is a member of the Russian parliament’s lower house, warned that a 30-day truce would allow Ukraine to beef up arms supplies and regroup its troops before resuming hostilities.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political commentator, suggested that Moscow could demand a halt on Western arms supplies to Ukraine as part of a ceasefire. “An embargo on arms supplies to Ukraine could be a condition for a truce,” he wrote.
Former first lady Michelle Obama speaks at a campaign rally for democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in Kalamazoo, Mich., on Oct. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, will host a new weekly podcast series starting this month featuring a special guest pulled from the world of entertainment, sports, health and business.
“IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson” will address “everyday questions shaping our lives, relationships and the world around us,” according to a press release. IMO is slang for “in my opinion.”
Some of the guests slated to speak to the former first lady and Robinson, the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, include the actors Issa Rae and Keke Palmer and psychologist Dr. Orna Guralnik.
Other guests include filmmakers Seth and Lauren Rogan; soccer star Abby Wambach; authors Jay Shetty, Glennon Doyle and Logan Ury; editor Elaine Welteroth; radio personality Angie Martinez; media mogul Tyler Perry; actor Tracee Ellis Ross; husband-and-wife athlete and actor Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union; and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky.
The first two episodes — the first is an introductory one and the second features Rae — will premiere on March 12. New episodes will be released weekly and will be available on all audio platforms and YouTube.
“With everything going on in the world, we’re all looking for answers and people to turn to,” Obama said in a statement. “There is no single way to deal with the challenges we may be facing — whether it’s family, faith, or our personal relationships — but taking the time to open up and talk about these issues can provide hope.”
Greenland’s pro-business opposition Demokraatit party, which favours a slow approach to independence from Denmark, won Tuesday’s parliamentary election that was dominated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to take control of the island.
Demokraatit secured 29.9% of the votes with all ballots counted, up from 9.1% in 2021, ahead of the opposition Naleraq party, which favours rapid independence, at 24.5%.
Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has vowed to make Greenland – a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark – part of the United States, saying it is vital to U.S. security interests, an idea rejected by most Greenlanders.
The vast island, with a population of just 57,000, has been caught up in a geopolitical race for dominance in the Arctic, where melting ice caps are making its resources more accessible and opening new shipping routes. Both Russia and China have intensified military activity in the region.
“People want change … We want more business to finance our welfare,” said Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Demokraatit’s leader and a former minister of industry and minerals.
“We don’t want independence tomorrow, we want a good foundation,” Nielsen told reporters in Nuuk.
He will now hold talks with other parties to try and form a governing coalition.
The ruling Inuit Ataqatigiit party and its partner Siumut, which also seek a slow path towards independence, won a combined 36% of votes, down from 66.1% in 2021.
“We respect the election outcome,” Prime Minister Mute Egede of the Inuit Ataqatigiit said in a Facebook post, adding that he would listen to any proposals in upcoming coalition talks.
Greenland is a former Danish colony and has been a territory since 1953. It gained some autonomy in 1979 when its first parliament was formed, but Copenhagen still controls foreign affairs, defence and monetary policy and provides just under $1 billion a year to the economy.
In 2009, it won the right to declare full independence through a referendum, even though it has not done so out of concern living standards would drop without Denmark’s economic support.
“I strongly believe that we will very soon start to live a life more based on who we are, based on our culture, based on our own language, and start to make regulations based on us, not based on Denmark,” said Qupanuk Olsen, candidate for the main pro-independence party Naleraq.
Inge Olsvig Brandt, a candidate for the ruling Inuit Ataqatigiit party, said:
“We don’t need the independence right now. We have too many things to work on. I think we have to work with ourselves, our history, and we are going to have a lot of healing work with us before we can take the next step.”
Voting had been extended by half an hour at some of the 72 polling stations across the Arctic island, where some 40,500 people were eligible to cast their ballot, although the final turnout was not immediately available. INUIT PRIDE
Leader of Demokraatit, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, reacts during the election party at cafe Killut in Nuuk, March 12, 2025. Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
Trump’s vocal interest has shaken up the status quo, and coupled with the growing pride of the Indigenous people in their Inuit culture, put independence front and centre in the election.
In the final debate on Greenland’s state broadcaster KNR late on Monday, leaders of the five parties currently in parliament unanimously said they did not trust Trump.
“He is trying to influence us. I can understand if citizens feel insecure,” said Erik Jensen, leader of government coalition partner Siumut.
A January poll suggested a majority of Greenland’s inhabitants support independence, but are divided on timing.
Early on, the election campaign focused on the anger and frustration aimed at historical wrongdoings by Denmark, according to Julie Rademacher, a consultant and former adviser to Greenland’s government.
“But I think the fear of the U.S. imperialist approach has lately become bigger than the anger towards Denmark,” said Rademacher.
Reuters spoke to more than a dozen Greenlanders in Nuuk, all of whom said they favoured independence, although many expressed concern that a swift transition could damage the economy and eliminate Nordic welfare services like universal healthcare and free schooling.
“We don’t want to be part of the U.S. for obvious reasons; healthcare and Trump,” said Tuuta Lynge-Larsen, a bank employee and Nuuk resident, adding that this election was especially important. “We don’t like the attention, to put it short.”
The island holds substantial natural resources, including critical minerals such as rare earths used in high-tech industries, ranging from electric vehicles to missile systems.
However, Greenland has been slow to extract them due to environmental concerns, severe weather, and China’s near-total control of the sector, which has made it difficult for companies elsewhere to make a profit or secure buyers.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian looks on as he attends a press conference with Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani (not pictured), in Tehran, Iran. February 19, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran would not negotiate with the U.S. while being threatened, telling President Donald Trump to “do whatever the hell you want”, Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.
“It is unacceptable for us that they (the U.S.) give orders and make threats. I won’t even negotiate with you. Do whatever the hell you want”, state media quoted Pezeshkian as saying.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that Tehran would not be bullied into negotiations, a day after Trump said he had sent a letter urging Iran to engage in talks on a new nuclear deal.
While expressing openness to a deal with Tehran, Trump has reinstated the “maximum pressure” campaign he applied in his first term as president to isolate Iran from the global economy and drive its oil exports down towards zero.
In an interview with Fox Business, Trump said last week, “There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran has long denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon. However, it is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% weapons-grade level, the IAEA has warned.
Only seven countries met World Health Organization (WHO) air quality standards last year, data showed on Tuesday, as researchers warned that the war on smog would only get harder after the United States shut down its global monitoring efforts.
Chad and Bangladesh were the world’s most polluted countries in 2024, with average smog levels more than 15 times higher than WHO guidelines, according to figures compiled by Swiss air quality monitoring firm IQAir.
Only Australia, New Zealand, the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Estonia and Iceland made the grade, IQAir said.
Significant data gaps, especially in Asia and Africa, cloud the worldwide picture, and many developing countries have relied on air quality sensors mounted on U.S. embassy and consulate buildings to track their smog levels.
However, the State Department has recently ended the scheme, citing budget constraints, with more than 17 years of data removed last week from the U.S. government’s official air quality monitoring site, airnow.gov, , including readings collected in Chad.
“Most countries have a few other data sources, but it’s going to impact Africa significantly, because oftentimes these are the only sources of publicly available real-time air quality monitoring data,” said Christi Chester-Schroeder, IQAir’s air quality science manager.
Data concerns meant Chad was excluded from IQAir’s 2023 list, but it was also ranked the most polluted country in 2022, plagued by Sahara dust as well as uncontrolled crop burning.
People move through a dusty road, as air quality reduces ahead of the winter in Dhaka, Bangladesh, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain Purchase Licensing Rights
Average concentrations of small, hazardous airborne particles known as PM2.5 hit 91.8 micrograms per cubic metre (mg/cu m) last year in the country, slightly higher than 2022.
The WHO recommends levels of no more than 5 mg/cu m, a standard met by only 17% of cities last year.
India, fifth in the smog rankings behind Chad, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, saw average PM2.5 fall 7% on the year to 50.6 mg/cu m.
But it accounted for 12 of the top 20 most polluted cities, with Byrnihat, in a heavily industrialised part of the country’s northeast, in first place, registering an average PM2.5 level of 128 mg/cu m.
Climate change is playing an increasing role in driving up pollution, Chester-Schroeder warned, with higher temperatures causing fiercer and lengthier forest fires that swept through parts of South East Asia and South America.
Christa Hasenkopf, director of the Clean Air Program at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute (EPIC), said at least 34 countries will lose access to reliable pollution data after the U.S. programme was closed.
The health clinic where Alice Okwirry collects her HIV medication in Kenya’s capital Nairobi has been rationing supplies of antiretrovirals to one-month refills since the U.S. government froze foreign aid.
On the outskirts of the city, meanwhile, millions of life-saving doses sit on the shelves of a warehouse, unused and unreachable.
The clinic is a half hour’s drive from the warehouse, but for Okwirry, they may as well be an ocean apart.
Without U.S. funding, distribution from the warehouse, which stocks all U.S. government-donated HIV medicine to Kenya, has ceased, leaving supplies of some drugs worryingly low, according to a former USAID official and a health official in Kenya.
The 90-day foreign aid freeze, ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump after taking office on January 20, has upended the global supply chain for medical products to fight HIV and other diseases. It is also blocking the distribution of drugs that long ago reached their destination countries.
“I was just seeing death now coming,” said 50-year-old Okwirry who was diagnosed with HIV in 2008 and has a 15-year-old daughter, Chichi, who is also HIV-positive.
Okwirry used to receive six-month supplies of ARVs from the clinic but now can only get one month.
“I told Chichi: what about if you hear the drugs are doomed?” Okwirry said, growing emotional. “She told me: Mom, I’ll be leaning on you.”
The State Department issued a waiver last month exempting funding for HIV treatment from the freeze.
But the USAID payments system in Kenya is down after the cuts, meaning contractors who implement the programmes cannot be paid, said Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin, who was the deputy head of communications for USAID, East Africa, until resigning on Feb. 3 in protest at the dismantling of the agency.
“Projects are left wondering: ‘Well, how am I going to resume activities if you’re not paying me money?” he said. “The waivers that have been given are really waivers on paper.”
In Kenya, officials in Washington have not authorised the release of money required to distribute the $34 million worth of medicine and equipment at the warehouse, he added.
According to a Kenyan government document seen by Reuters, about $10 million is needed for that distribution. The Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies, the Christian charity that runs the warehouse, supplies drugs to some 2,000 clinics nationwide, its website says.
Knowles-Coursin told Reuters the commodities at the warehouse include 2.5 million bottles of ARVs, 750,000 HIV test kits and 500,000 malaria treatments.
Alice Okwirry, 50, a widow living with HIV/AIDS, sits inside her house in Kianda village within Kibera district of Nairobi, Kenya February 28, 2025. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya Purchase Licensing Rights
USAID referred a request for comment to the State Department, which did not respond. The Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies did not respond to requests for comment.
Kenya’s Health Minister, Deborah Barasa, said she expected her government to mobilise funds to allow the supplies at MEDS to be released within two to four weeks.
“We have identified the resources that are required,” she said in an interview.
‘FEAR AND ANXIETY’
Kenya has the seventh-largest number of people living with HIV in the world, at around 1.4 million, according to World Health Organization data. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the main U.S. vehicle for funding HIV treatment, supplies some 40% of Kenya’s HIV drugs and supplies.
A health official in Kenya, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said stocks of two critical HIV treatments, Dolutegravir and Nevirapine, were low but did not know exactly how much remained nationwide.
Dolutegravir is often used to treat coinfections of HIV and tuberculosis. Nevirapine is often used to prevent mother-to-child transmission.
Barasa, the health minister, said there would be enough Dolutegravir to last five months and Nevirapine to last eight months once the MEDS stocks were released.
For the time being, some patients can only get refills of their ARVS for one week at a time, said Nelson Otwoma, director of the National Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya.
Lawsuits aiming to compel the Trump administration to restore funding for humanitarian programmes and reinstate thousands of fired or furloughed USAID workers are working their way through U.S. courts.
On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration has cancelled more than 80% of all USAID programmes.
The Kenyan government’s council on syndemic diseases estimated in an internal brief last month, seen by the Reuters, that the U.S. cuts had created funding gaps of around $80 million.
Donald Trump (right) and Narendra Modi met at the White House for talks in February
Indian Americans are increasingly optimistic about India’s future, but hold deep concerns about US-India relations under a second Donald Trump administration, a new survey finds.
The 2024 Indian-American Survey, conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and YouGov in October, examined Indian-American political attitudes.
Two pivotal elections happened in India and the US last year, amid a deepening – but occasionally strained – partnership. Tensions between the countries flared over a US federal indictment of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and allegations of a Delhi-backed assassination plot on American soil.
With more than five million Indian-origin residents in the US, the survey asked some key questions: How do Indian Americans view former president Joe Biden’s handling of US-India ties? Do they see Donald Trump as a better option? And how do they assess India’s trajectory post the 2024 election?
Here are some key takeaways from the report, which was based on a nationally representative online survey of 1,206 Indian-American adult residents.
Trump v Biden on India
Indian Americans rated the Biden administration’s handling of US-India relations more favourably than Trump’s first term.
A hypothetical Kamala Harris administration was seen as better for bilateral ties than a second Trump term during the polling.
Partisan polarisation plays a key role: 66% of Indian-American Republicans believe Trump was better for US-India ties, while just 8% of Democrats agree.
Conversely, half of Indian-American Democrats favour Biden, compared to 15% of Republicans.
Since most Indian Americans are Democrats, this gives Biden the overall edge.
During their February meeting at the White House, both Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised each other’s leadership, but Trump criticised India’s high trade tariffs, calling them a “big problem.”
‘Murder-for-hire’ controversy
The alleged Indian plot to assassinate a separatist on US soil has not widely registered – only half of respondents are aware of it.
In October, the US charged a former Indian intelligence officer with attempted murder and money laundering for allegedly plotting to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US-based advocate for an independent Sikh state, Khalistan.
This marked the first time the Indian government has been directly implicated in an alleged assassination attempt on a dissident. India has stated it is co-operating with the US investigation. In January, a panel set up by India to examine Washington’s allegations recommended legal action against an unnamed individual believed to be the former intelligence agent.
A narrow majority of the respondents said that India would “not be justified in taking such action and hold identical feelings about the US if the positions were reversed”.
Israel and the Palestinians
Indian Americans are split along partisan party lines, with Democrats expressing greater empathy for Palestinians and Republicans leaning pro-Israel.
Four in 10 respondents believe Biden has been too pro-Israel in the ongoing conflict.
The attack in October 2023 by Hamas fighters from Gaza killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, inside Israel and saw 251 people taken hostage. Most have been released in ceasefire agreements or other arrangements.
Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Talks to prolong the fragile ceasefire, the first phase of which ended on 1 March, are expected to resume in Qatar on Monday.
India’s outlook brightens
Forty-seven percent of Indian Americans believe India is heading in the right direction, a 10 percentage point increase from four years ago.
The same share approves of Modi’s performance as prime minister. Additionally, four in 10 respondents feel that India’s 2024 election – where Modi’s party did not get a majority – made the country more democratic.
The survey found that many Indian Americans support Modi and believe India is on the right track, yet half are unaware of the alleged assassination attempt on US soil.
Does this indicate a gap in information access, selective engagement or a tendency to overlook certain actions in favour of broader nationalist sentiment?
“It is hard to tease out the precise reason for this, but our sense is that this has more to do with selective engagement,” Milan Vaishnav, co-author of the study, said.
Data collected by Carnegie in 2020 shows that around 60% of Indian Americans follow Indian government and public affairs regularly, leaving a significant portion who “engage only sporadically”.
“Often people form broad impressions based on a combination of the news, social media and interactions with friends and family. Given the deluge of news in the US of late, it is not entirely surprising that the ‘murder-for-hire’ plot did not break through for a large section of the community,” Mr Vaishnav said.
Indian Americans, while cautious about Trump and generally favouring Biden or Harris for US-India relations, continue to strongly support Modi back in India. Given Modi’s nationalist policies, what accounts for this divergence? Is it driven more by personal impact than ideology?
“This is a case of ‘where you sit is where you stand’,” Mr Vaishnav said.
He said in related research, “we’ve explored this question in depth and found that Indian Americans generally hold more liberal views on US policy issues compared to India”.
“For instance, while Muslim Indian-Americans – minorities both in India and the US – maintain consistently more liberal attitudes, Hindu Indian-Americans express liberal views in the US (where they are a minority) but more conservative stances in India, where they belong to the majority.
“In other words, a person’s majority or minority status plays a key role in shaping their political views,” Mr Vaishnav said.
If Indian Americans viewed Trump as a threat to bilateral ties, why did they embrace him during his first term, as seen at events like ‘Howdy Modi!’? Has their opinion of Trump shifted due to his policies, or is it more about changing political currents?
“We should not generalise from one event or even one segment of the Indian American population. More than 50,000 Indian Americans gathered at ‘Howdy, Modi!’ first and foremost to see Modi, not Trump. Recall that Trump was added at a later date,” Mr Vaishnav said.
“Second, this is a diverse diaspora with a range of political views. While Indian Americans lean overwhelmingly toward the Democratic Party, a very sizeable minority – we estimate around 30% in 2024 – support the Republicans under Trump.”
Indian Americans remain committed to the Democratic Party, but attachment has waned. Some 47% identify as Democrats, down from 56% in 2020, a survey found last year.
Do Indian Americans have a nuanced understanding of political developments in both countries, or are their views more influenced by diaspora-driven narratives and media echo chambers?
Mr Vaishnav said data from 2020 shows that online news was the primary source of information about India, followed by television, social media and word of mouth. Within social media, YouTube, Facebook and WhatsApp were the most common platforms.
PM Modi strengthens cultural ties with Mauritius, emphasizing the deep-rooted bond of faith and friendship | X – @narendramodi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday hailed the deep-rooted cultural connection between India and Mauritius, that he said is evident in the warmth of the diaspora present in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation.
“Our forefathers were brought here from various regions of India. When we consider the diversity in language, dialects, and eating habits, this place truly represents a mini-Hindustan — a miniature India!” said PM Modi while addressing a community programme in Port Louis during his ongoing two-day State visit to the country at the invitation of Mauritius Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam.
मेरे लिए मॉरीशस का सर्वोच्च नागरिक सम्मान दोनों देशों के ऐतिहासिक रिश्तों के साथ ही उन भारतवंशियों का भी सम्मान है, जिन्होंने मॉरीशस को इस ऊंचाई तक पहुंचाने में अमूल्य योगदान दिया है। pic.twitter.com/yFN9ZwlSf6
This is PM Modi’s first visit to Mauritius since 2015 when he had outlined India’s Vision SAGAR – Security and growth for All in the Region – which along with ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy, ‘Act East’ policy, ‘Think West’ policy and ‘Connect Central Asia’ policy continues to guide New Delhi’s approach to the neighbourhood and beyond while strengthening historical and civilizational ties at the same time.
प्रभु श्री राम हों या रामायण या फिर गंगा मैया के प्रति अटूट आस्था, भारत-मॉरीशस के बीच मित्रता का यह बहुत बड़ा आधार है। pic.twitter.com/Yu6yayPnPC
“10 years ago, on this very date, I was in Mauritius. Whenever I come to Mauritius, I feel as if I have come among my own people. There is a feeling of belonging in the air, the soil and the water here,” he said, adding that Mauritius remains at the heart of India’s SAGAR vision.
पूर्वांचल का सांसद होने के नाते मैं यह समझ सकता हूं कि बिहार और भोजपुरी बेल्ट के साथ मॉरीशस के कितने भावुक संबंध हैं। pic.twitter.com/RxKg2O27HR
“Mauritius is not just a partner country. For us, Mauritius is family. This bond is deep and strong, rooted in history, heritage and human spirit. When Mauritius faces a crisis, India is the first to respond. When Mauritius prospers, India is the first to celebrate,” he told the gathering at the event which also included PM Ramgoolam, ministers from his cabinet, diplomats, top dignitaries besides members of the Indian community in the country.
At the start of the event, Mauritius Prime Minister Ramgoolam announced his government’s decision to bestow the country’s highest honour ‘The Grand Commander of the Order of the Star’ and Key of the Indian Ocean’ to Prime Minister Modi.
Only five foreign dignitaries, none of them Indian, have received the honour before PM Modi, including South Africa’s first democratically elected President Nelson Mandela who fought against Apartheid. It is also the 21st international award bestowed upon him by a country.
The last decade has witnessed numerous efforts on the part of the Government of India to improve friendship with Mauritius. pic.twitter.com/bsoO3UsrkN
“The people and the government of Mauritius have decided to confer upon me their highest civilian honour. I humbly accept this decision with great respect. This is not just an honour for me, it is an honour for the historic bond between India and Mauritius,” said PM Modi.
In a special gesture, Prime Minister Modi on Tuesday handed over OCI (Overseas Citizen Of India) cards to Mauritius President Dharambeer Gokhool and First Lady Vrinda Gokhool.
During his address, the PM mentioned that a decision has been made to extend the OCI Card to the seventh generation of the Indian diaspora in Mauritius.
X was down for thousands of users on Monday amid a series of outagesImage: Jaque Silva/NurPhoto/picture alliance
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, claimed on Monday that the social media platform had been the target of a “massive cyberattack” after outages left it unavailable for thousands of users.
“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” Musk said in a post.
“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” he claimed, adding that “either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”
Musk blames “IP addresses in Ukraine”
Later, in an interview with Fox Business, Musk said that the computer systems used in the alleged attack appeared to have IP addresses in Ukraine but did not immediately provide any evidence for his claim.
However, some cybersecurity experts stressed that this does not necessarily mean that the attack originated in Ukraine.
Nearly 40,000 users initially reported problems with X at the peak of the outage at around 10 a.m. US East Coast time (2 p.m. UTC) on Monday, according to tracking site Downdetector.com.
Saudi Arabia is the new hub for talks on the biggest conflicts and crises, such as Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan.Image: Amer Hilabi/AFP
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is increasingly busy hosting state leaders who fly in to discuss pressing global conflicts.
This Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met the Saudi Crown Prince to speak about Russia’s war in Ukraine. This is ahead of a Tuesday meeting between Ukrainian and a US teams set to negotiate a potential end to Russia’s war of aggression, as well as a security deal that would include US access to Ukraine’s valuable mineral and metal deposits.
It will be the first time that Ukrainian and US delegates talk face-to-face after the public spat between US President Donald Trump and President Zelenskyy in the White House in late February.
The fact that the two countries have agreed to meet in Saudi Arabia — and not, say, in Europe — highlights the emerging key position of the oil-rich kingdom in the Middle East.
“Saudi Arabia has indeed established itself as a platform for dialog in the last two to three years,” Sebastian Sons, a senior researcher for the German think tank CARPO, told DW.
“In Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy strategy, it currently plays a very important role to talk to everyone,” he added.
Positioning itself as a neutral mediator
In doing so, it would appear the kingdom is seeking to hold a position of neutrality, in order to maintain open channels of communication with all parties involved in the conflicts it is seeking to mediate.
In fact, “Saudi Arabia’s neutrality has led to its current mediating role,” Mohammed Kawas, a London-based political analyst, told DW.
“The country refrained from joining the West’s criticism and sanctions against Russia, while it was also in regular contact with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and provided humanitarian aid packages and medical aid worth millions for Ukraine,” Kawas explained.
In 2024, Riyadh helped facilitate a historic prisoner swap between Russia and the US. And in mid-Februar, the country hosted US-Russia talks, in which top Washington and Moscow officials met to discuss normalizing ties between both nations and ending the war in Ukraine.
It also seems likely that Riyadh will host a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — the first since the Republican assumed office earlier this year.
In addition to facilitating talks on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, Riyadh has also become a meeting spot for summits of the Arab League to discuss the conflict in Sudan and the future of Palestinians in Gaza.
“We see it providing that mediating role between the US and Russia, between the US and Ukraine, and it has become an essential player in the Middle East, certainly with regards to the Palestinians, to Syria and to Lebanon,” Neil Quilliam, a foreign affairs specialist at the London-based think tank Chatham House, told DW.
Kawas echoed this view: “With regard to the Middle East, all negotiations in the region go through Riyadh.”
Saudi interests
This pivot toward establishing itself as a neutral and reliable communication hub marks a turnaround from Saudi Arabia’s international isolation, which reached its nadir following the 2018 killing of the the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It might also help draw attention from the kingdom’s poor human rights record altogether.
Instead of defending domestic policies, the country’s new international standing enables the Saudi Crown Prince to leverage influence across other conflicts, observers point out.
“Saudi Arabia will certainly use the opportunity to mediate with Ukraine in order to present themselves as a reliable partner, as it wants concessions from Trump, especially with regard to Gaza and a future Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Sebastian Sons told DW.
Trump, a staunch ally of Israel’s, would like to see Israel and Saudi Arabia normalize ties.
However, the Hamas-led attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, and the resulting war in Gaza have stalled the process.
Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia rejected Donald Trump’s Gaza plans, in which he had proposed to turn the war-battered Gaza Strip into a “Riviera of the Middle East” under US ownership and displace some 2.3 million Palestinians to other Arab countries, such as Egypt and Jordan.Human rights experts have criticized these plans as tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
Saudi Arabia has since reiterated its stance that it will not seek to normalize ties with Israel before a two-state solution, which would secure a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state, has been implemented.
Financial incentives
When Trump assumed office for his second term earlier this year, the Saudi Crown Prince was the first foreign leader to congratulate him. Shortly after, Trump called Crown Prince Salman a “wonderful person” during an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
In 2017, Trump’s first state visit abroad was to Saudi Arabia. The move was seen as controversial, especially as it coincided with Trumps admission that he had selected the kingdom as his first destination because it had pledged a series of investments worth over $350 billion (€323 billion) in the US economy.
While some victims of enforced disappearances returned home alive, others were reportedly found dead. And 330 still remain missingImage: Mosfiqur Johan/DW
A commission set up to investigate the issue of enforced disappearances in Bangladesh announced last week that at least 330 people who were reportedly picked up by authorities and vanished without a trace are believed to be dead.
Moinul Islam Chowdhury, who leads the Commission of Enquiry on Enforced Disappearances (CEED), told a press conference that top officials who served under Sheikh Hasina — the prime minister who stepped down and fled to neighboring India in August following anti-government protests — were involved in orchestrating the reported crimes.
During Hasina’s 15-year rule, from 2009 to 2024, more than 700 enforced disappearances were reported, according to the Bangladeshi human rights organization Odhikar.
After the formation of the five-member commission, however, reports of more disappearances came to light, with the figure now standing at 1,752.
Though some victims of enforced disappearances returned home alive, others were reportedly found dead.
No closure for the bereaved
During the press conference on March 4, Chowdhury said the commission was looking into the possibility that some of the victims might be incarcerated in India.
“We have received a list of 1,067 Bangladeshis incarcerated in Indian prisons over the last two to two and a half years. We are in the process of checking if any of them were victims of enforced disappearance,” he said.
Nasrin Jahan Smrity told DW that she felt shattered after listening to Chowdhury’s statement.
Her husband, Ismail Hossain Baten, an activist belonging to the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), has been missing since 2019.
“For six years, I have been waiting for my husband after RAB men abducted him,” she said, referring to Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite counterterrorism force.
“Following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, when a few of the enforced disappearance victims were released after years of captivity, I hoped my husband too would come out soon,” she said.
“Now, the statement from the commission chairman has shattered all our hopes. My children have been crying inconsolably since we heard the news,” she added.
Rights groups slam Hasina’s rule
Hasina has long drawn sharp criticism from rights groups for ruling with an iron fist.
In 2021, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report that “despite credible and consistent evidence” of enforced disappearances, Hasina’s then-ruling Awami League party ignored widespread calls to “address the culture of impunity.”
After Hasina’s ouster in 2024, Abdullahil Amaan Azmi, a former brigadier general, and lawyer Ahmad Bin Kashem were freed — after having been missing for eight years following their abductions.
A day later, political activist Michael Chakma was released from captivity after he went missing in 2019.
Rights groups have long reported that the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), a military intelligence agency, operated several secret detention centers for the victims of enforced disappearances.
Azmi, Kashem and Chakma said they were tortured inside a secret DGFI-operated prison named Aynaghar, meaning “house of mirrors” in Bengali.
According to rights groups, RAB, DGFI, the police, and other security and intelligence agencies were involved in enforced disappearances of individuals during Hasina’s time in power.
After Hasina’s ouster, the DGFI released a statement acknowledging that many Bangladeshis became victims of enforced disappearances during Hasina’s time in office.
“But we are not holding anyone in captivity now,” the statement read.
Sazzad Hussain, a member of the CEED, said the team found no trace of the locations of 330 victims in the more than 1,000 cases they have scrutinized so far.
“We have visited many offices of different intelligence agencies and security forces, and exposed 14 secret detention centers in different locations in Dhaka and outside Dhaka,” he said.
“The commission did not find any survivors or trace of victims in those detention centers. Among the 1,752 victims of enforced disappearances, 330 persons are still missing,” he added.
Hussain also underlined that the commission had found evidence showing the involvement of topmost officials in Hasina’s government, including herself, in these activities.
“After reviewing the cases, we have already identified several high-ranking officials of the security forces and intelligence agencies who were involved in the disappearances,” he said.
Hasina and her senior officials have repeatedly denied such reports.
Evidence destroyed?
Some activists say the DGFI destroyed evidence related to the enforced disappearances soon after Hasina’s downfall.
“That is why the military recently refused to allow access during a government visit to the incommunicado detention centers operated by the DGFI,” Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman of the Capital Punishment Justice Project, which has been documenting rights violations in Bangladesh for over 15 years, told DW.
“The DGFI is a powerful intelligence agency of the armed forces, which enjoys blanket impunity and evades accountability for its actions,” he said.
“When the head of the interim government planned a visit accompanying the victims, journalists and the members of the Enquiry Commission on Enforced Disappearances in early February 2025, the armed forces did their best to conceal their crimes by obstructing access to the detention center.”
Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director of HRW, told DW that the latest statement from the commission is “shattering” for the affected families, who, she said, deserve to know the truth about what happened to their loved ones.
“The interim government should seek a resolution at the HRC to set up an expert mechanism to analyze and preserve evidence that can be used for prosecution either in Bangladesh or elsewhere,” she said.
Over the course of Duterte’s six-year presidency, more than 7,000 people were killed in official anti-drug operations, according to police records, although rights advocates say the number is closer to 30,000 [File: Bullit Marquez/AP]Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is investigating allegations that “crimes against humanity” were committed during his brutal “war on drugs”.
Duterte was taken into custody on Tuesday at Manila airport upon his arrival from Hong Kong, according to the Philippine government, which received the ICC request via the Interpol international police agency.
“Upon his arrival, the prosecutor general served the ICC notification for an arrest warrant to the former president for the crimes against humanity,” the government said in a statement. “He’s now in the custody of authorities.”
The charge is related to Duterte’s brutal anti-drugs drive, which he ran during his time in office in 2016-2022. Suspects were deprived of “due process under the law” and thousands of people, including children, died, according to the complaint.
The former president questioned the legality of the arrest.
“What is the law and what is the crime that I committed,” Duterte said in a video uploaded on social media by his daughter, Veronica Duterte.
“Explain to me now the legal basis for my being here as apparently I was brought here not of my own volition. It’s somebody else’s,” he added.
In a speech on Saturday in Hong Kong, he had also defended his actions as president saying he “did everything…for the Filipino people”.
Over the course of Duterte’s six-year presidency, more than 7,000 people were killed in official anti-drug operations, according to police records.
However, human rights advocates have claimed that the killings numbered more than 30,000, including those who were killed by unknown suspects, some of whom later turned out to be police officers.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Duterte’s arrest “a critical step for accountability in the Philippines”.
“His arrest could bring victims and their families closer to justice and sends the clear message that no one is above the law. The Marcos government should swiftly surrender him to the ICC,” Bryony Lau, HRW’s deputy Asia director, said in a statement.
‘Shoot and kill’
The ICC began examining the complaint in 2018.
The arrest order is seen as a major victory for human rights campaigners and families of victims, despite Manila’s decision to withdraw as signatory of the Rome Statute.
During his presidency, Duterte declared a relentless war against drugs, inciting police officers to either “shoot and kill” drug suspects, or provoke them into fighting back to justify the use of lethal force.
Most of the cases probed by the ICC took place between 2016 and 2019, when a Duterte order to withdraw from the ICC came into effect.
Earlier alleged crimes committed when Duterte was mayor of the southern city of Davao, where he served for two decades, were also investigated.
Among those killed during the anti-drug war campaign were more than a dozen town mayors and other local officials as well as lawyers and judges.
Several children, who were without any links to any drug activity, were also killed. The government dismissed these deaths as “collateral damage”.
The ICC’s investigation into the bloody drug-war had so enraged Duterte, that he ordered the the withdrawal of Manila from the ICC.
He also threatened, using racially-charged language, to arrest then-ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda should she visit the Philippines to conduct an official investigation.
Financial news is displayed as people work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, the United States, on March 4, 2025 [Seth Wenig/AP]The United States’ stock market has shed more than $1.7 trillion in value after US President Donald Trump declined to rule out the possibility the economy could enter a recession this year.
The benchmark S&P 500 on Monday tumbled 2.7 percent, dragging the index nearly 9 percent below its all-time high reached on February 19.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 plunged 3.81 percent, its steepest single-day loss since September 2022.
The losses, which follow two weeks of steep declines, mean that the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 are now at their lowest levels since September.
Tesla, the electric car company run by Trump’s cost-cutting tsar, Elon Musk, racked up some of the steepest losses among individual firms, plunging 15.43 percent.
Asian stock markets piled on the losses on Tuesday morning, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Taiwan’s TAIEX dropping more than 2.5 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng sliding about 1.5 percent.
The market rout comes as Trump’s back-and-forth tariff announcements have unnerved investors and stoked fears that the economy could be headed for a major slowdown or, at worst, a recession.
In an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday, Trump left open the possibility of a downturn when asked if he expected a recession this year.
“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big,” Trump said. “We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing…It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.”
“There’s total uncertainty in the market,” Steve Okun, founder and CEO of APAC Advisors in Singapore, told Al Jazeera.
“[Trump] has no credibility right now when it comes to tariffs, because of what he has done, in particular with Mexico and Canada. That’s why the markets are reacting the way they are – they don’t know what’s going to happen. “
Trump last week slapped a 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada and doubled the rate of duties on Chinese goods to 20 percent, only to announce two days later that he would postpone some duties on Mexican and Canadian goods until April 2.
A separate 25 percent tariff on imports of steel and aluminium is set to take effect on Wednesday.
Goldman Sachs economists last week raised its odds of a recession within the next 12 months from 15 percent to 20 percent, while JPMorgan Chase has lifted the probability from 30 percent to 40 percent “owing to extreme US policies”.
‘Indecisiveness, confusion and mixed messaging’
New York Stock Exchange trader Peter Tuchman described Monday’s trading session as a “bloodbath”.
“These stocks are being eaten away and this is obviously all over fear of a recession, right?” Tuchman said in a video posted on X.
“We had a roller coaster last week, we had some up days, we had some down days – and all a function of what is coming out of the Oval Office, which is just complete indecisiveness, confusion and mixed messaging and the investing community losing confidence in the whole situation.”
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who represents the state of Massachusetts, accused Trump of jeopardising the economy with his policies.
“We’re in real economic trouble thanks to the President, and right now, the stock market is a flashing warning light,” Warren said on X.
In a rare note of dissension with Trump among Republicans, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul also raised alarm about the stock rout.
“The stock market is comprised of millions of people who are simultaneously trading,” Paul said on X.
“The market indexes are a distillation of sentiment. When the markets tumble like this in response to tariffs, it pays to listen.”
Young girls, whose families were displaced by floods, sit on a makeshift bed, as they take shelter on higher ground during flooding in August 2010 near Thatta, near Hyderabad in Sindh province, Pakistan. Incidents of child marriage rose following these floods and, again, in the wake of flooding in 2022 [Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images]Asifa* was sitting on the cool earthen floor of her family’s home when her parents entered the room. The sun had begun to set over the small village of 250 families nestled in the heart of Pakistan’s southeastern Sindh province, casting a warm glow over the surrounding arid landscape. Asifa remembers distinctly the smell of dried grass carried by the wind.
Her mother’s face was hard to read, but Asifa could tell something was different today. Her parents looked at each other briefly before turning to her. “Your marriage has been arranged,” her father told her.
Asifa was just 13 years old.
At first, she didn’t fully grasp the situation. Her mind went to thoughts of new clothes, shiny jewellery, and the celebrations she had heard about from older girls in the village. A wedding meant gifts, makeup and new outfits.
“I thought it would be a big celebration,” Asifa recalls, her voice heavy as she sits outside her husband’s home on a colourful charpai, a woven daybed, and looks out over the cracked earth of the village where she grew up. She is wrapped in a faded pink dupatta, her young face framed by dark hair. Now 15, she is the mother of a baby, a few months old, whom she holds tenderly in her arms.
Her house of mud and straw stands behind her, its roof thatched and weathered by years of harsh winds, rains and scorching sun.
“I never truly understood what marriage would involve,” she says. “I never realised that it would imply being with a man older than me, someone I didn’t know or choose.”
Furthermore, she says, her husband is in debt having taken out a loan of 300,000 Pakistani rupees ($1,070) to give to her family when they agreed to the marriage. “He cannot pay it back.”
The family’s decision to marry their 13-year-old daughter off was not one made from tradition but out of sheer desperation.
Asifa’s parents had been hard hit by the catastrophic floods that ravaged Pakistan in 2022. For generations, her family cultivated rice and vegetables such as okra, chilies, tomatoes and onions in the once-rich landscape of the Main Nara Valley, but the rising waters left their fields unrecognisable, swamped and sterile.
The money the family had hoped to make from their harvests and the small savings they had set aside for their daughter’s future all vanished. For months, her parents tried to rebuild what they had lost, salvaging what little they could from the remnants of their land, borrowing from relatives in an attempt to make ends meet. But the devastating loss of their crops, along with rising prices of essentials and a lack of access to clean water, made it impossible to stay afloat.
With three other younger children at home, the couple concluded they could no longer afford to keep Asifa, let alone give her the education they had once hoped for her.
“They had no other choice,” Asifa says sadly.
A community scarred
In the village of Khan Mohammad Mallah, where farming, fishing and livestock rearing are the main sources of income, Asifa’s experience is not unusual. The floods of 2022 have left deep scars on the community, plunging families, now living at the mercy of the vagaries of the weather, into extreme poverty.
With homes destroyed, crops washed away and livelihoods shattered, the practice of child marriage, where men pay an agreed sum to families in exchange for marriage to girls as young as nine, is on the rise.
Last year, there were 45 recorded cases of children – mostly girls, but some boys as well – under the age of 18 being married in this one village alone, according to Sujag Sansar, an NGO working to combat child marriage in the region.
This is not a simple matter of tradition, says Mashooque Birhmani, founder of Sujag Sansar. Pakistan’s Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 set the legal age of marriage for boys at 18 and 16 for girls. In April 2014, the Sindh Assembly adopted the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act, which changed the minimum age to 18 for both girls and boys.
Birhmani believes the rise of child marriage is directly linked to the floods. Crucially, one-third of these underage marriages occurred in May and June – just before the monsoon rains begin – indicating that they took place in anticipation of the damage that was expected from the torrential downpours.
“Before the 2022 rains, girls would not get married so young in this area,” says Birhmani. “Such cases remained rare. Young girls were helping their parents make rope for wooden beds or work on the land.”
For many families, the decision to marry off young girls has become a means of survival, but it is also at the cost of the girls’ education, health and futures.
In recent years, the effects of climate change have become increasingly visible. Monsoon rains, once a lifeline for millions of Pakistan’s farmers and crucial in the normal cycle of food production, have grown increasingly erratic and severe, wreaking havoc on agricultural lands and exacerbating food shortages. In addition, rising temperatures are accelerating glacier melt in the north of the country, contributing to river swelling and overwhelming flood defences.
The climate crisis has triggered the phenomenon which has come to be known as “monsoon brides”. No formal studies of child marriage have been undertaken, but nongovernmental organisations such as Sujag Sansar say anecdotal evidence suggests the practice is becoming more widespread across the country as a whole. In the Sindh region, nearly a quarter of girls are believed to be married before the age of 18.
“There has been a notable uptick in forced marriages, particularly during the most catastrophic floods in the nation’s history – those of 2007, 2010 and 2022,” says Gulsher Panhwer, project manager at Sujag Sansar.
‘When they took her away, she clung to me’
For many, and in particular for women, these natural disasters are not distant nightmares.
The years have passed, but for Salwa, 40, the memory of her daughter’s wedding day is still hard to bear. As she plays with her four-year-old granddaughter, her tone becomes solemn as she begins to tell the story of what led to one of the darkest days of her life.
“We once lived off our land, but when the monsoons destroyed everything in 2010, we were forced to leave our home and seek refuge in another province,” she recalls. The family, which moved from Balochistan in southwestern Pakistan, depends on the cultivation of cotton and lush rice, but struggled to make ends meet in Khan Mohammad Mallah and resorted to marrying off their youngest daughter.
In 2010, Salwa married her then-12-year-old daughter to a 20-year-old man in exchange for 150,000 rupees ($535).
“When they took her to her new home, she clung to me, and we both wept. I regret this decision deeply, but I saw no other option at the time,” says Salwa, her voice cracking. She, herself, had been married at 13 because her family did not have enough money to feed her.
Despite her daughter’s marriage, she and her husband returned to live with Salwa in Khan Mohammad Mallah shortly afterwards. “They didn’t have enough money to survive on their own. They were just kids. We now live in poverty but at least we are reunited,” says Salwa, sighing, the wrinkles on her face betraying her exhaustion.
Today, Salwa is grandmother to her daughter’s four children. The eldest is 15 and studying at school, as are her siblings. Salwa says she hopes that the education they are receiving will enable them to marry of their own free will, breaking the cycle that has trapped the girls in her family for generations.
It is a fragile hope as Pakistan is experiencing more frequent and severe weather events such as floods, droughts and heatwaves.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that Pakistan, being one of the most vulnerable countries, will face worsening effects on agriculture, water availability, and food provision, further driving poverty and social instability.
The floods of 2022, the deadliest to date, inundated one-third of Pakistan, killing more than 1,700 people, displacing some 33 million – almost a third of its population – and submerging vast tracts of farmland that destroyed the country’s farming backbone.
Agriculture, which contributes a quarter of the nation’s gross domestic product and sustains one in three jobs, was hit particularly hard, with huge numbers of crops lost to the floods. Approximately 15 percent of the nation’s rice crop and 40 percent of its cotton crop were affected. The total cost of damage to the agriculture sector was approximately $12.97bn, with crops accounting for 82 percent of this total.
In Sindh province, entire villages have been left in ruins.
‘Significant progress’ undone by the floods
Sindh is particularly prone to flooding due to its proximity to the Indus River, which often overflows during heavy monsoon rains. Poor drainage systems, deforestation and climate change all exacerbate the risk of floods.
In this region, nearly 4.8 million people were affected by the 2022 floods, half of them children.
“With livelihoods destroyed and no reliable income, farmers, desperate to make ends meet, often resort to marrying off their daughters for an amount as modest as the price of a cow – or even less,” says Panhwer.
A lot of work has been done since 2010 to protect young girls from early marriages and people are now aware that marrying off their children is a crime, Panhwer says. “But when families are displaced in flood relief camps, they feel their daughters face higher risk of sexual assaults since they are no longer protected inside their homes. Their hope is also to protect them from the crushing poverty while raising enough funds to sustain the rest of the family.”
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Pakistan is home to nearly 19 million child brides. While the organisation reported in 2023 that there has been “significant progress” in reducing child marriages in the country, it warned that the 2022 monsoon floods could undo much of that progress.
President Donald Trump announced that discussions were ongoing with four potential buyers for TikTok’s United States operations, and a deal could be reached soon.
“We’re dealing with four different groups, and a lot of people want it,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Bloomberg reported. However, he didn’t mention the name of those four potential buyers but noted that “all four are good.”
TikTok’s Uncertain Future: Sale Deadline Extended as U.S. Market Remains Key
TikTok’s future has been uncertain since a law was enacted on Jan. 19, requiring its owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform due to national security concerns or face a ban. After taking office on Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order extending the deadline by 75 days before the law would be enforced.
The United States is TikTok’s most important market, while its parent company, ByteDance, runs a similar app called Douyin in China. Last year, TikTok’s U.S. operations were valued at up to $50 billion. Recently, Trump mentioned that he might extend the deadline again if needed but believed a deal could happen within a month.
Key Bidders Emerge in the Race to Acquire TikTok’s U.S. Operations
Several public bidders have emerged to buy TikTok’s United States operations. One group is led by billionaire Frank McCourt and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Another includes tech entrepreneur Jesse Tinsley and YouTube star MrBeast.
A third bid comes from San Francisco-based Perplexity AI, which has proposed a merger. Trump has also mentioned Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison as a potential buyer, and TikTok has already partnered with Oracle to manage its U.S. user data.
ByteDance CEO Engages with Trump
ByteDance, based in Beijing, has not shown interest in selling its U.S. business. However, its CEO, Shou Chew, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in December and attended the inauguration earlier this year.
The company has been trying to address national security concerns raised by U.S. lawmakers so that it can continue operating in the country. ByteDance, a privately held company, is now valued at over $400 billion by major investors like SoftBank Group.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, has published a book he hopes could be a framework for the future of Tibet AFP
The Dalai Lama published a book Tuesday he says is a “framework for the future of Tibet”, to guide compatriots in relations with Beijing after his death.
China says Tibet is an integral part of the country, and many exiled Tibetans fear Beijing will name a successor to the Dalai Lama when he dies, bolstering control over a land it poured troops into in 1950 — 75 years ago this coming October.
The book, “Voice for the Voiceless”, describes the Dalai Lama dealing with successive leaders of the People’s Republic of China on behalf of Tibet and its people.
“The right of the Tibetan people to be the custodians of their own homeland cannot be indefinitely denied, nor can their aspiration for freedom be crushed forever through oppression,” the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader writes.
“One clear lesson we know from history is this: If you keep people permanently unhappy, you cannot have a stable society.”
Tibet has alternated over the centuries between independence and control by China, which says it “peacefully liberated” the rugged plateau and brought infrastructure and education.
Celebrating his 90th birthday in July, he is among a fading few who can remember what their homeland was like before the 1959 uprising.
The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959, said the book details the “persistent efforts” he has made to over seven decades to “save my homeland and people”.
“Only when we have created an atmosphere where both sides can speak and negotiate freely can there be a lasting settlement,” he writes in the book.
“Tibetans have spent nearly 75 years fighting for freedom,” the Dalai Lama wrote in the Washington Post earlier this month, ahead of the book’s publication.
“Their struggle should continue beyond my lifetime.”
Talks between Beijing and Tibetan leaders have been frozen since 2010.
“Despite all the suffering and destruction, we still hold fast to the hope for a peaceful resolution of our struggle for freedom and dignity,” the Dalai Lama said in a statement about the book.
“From a 19-year-old negotiating with Chairman Mao at the height of his powers in Beijing to my recent attempts to communicate with President Xi Jinping, I convey in this book the sincerity of our efforts.
“My hope is that the book will… provide a framework for the future of Tibet even after I am gone.”
The Dalai Lama stepped down as his people’s political head in 2011, passing the baton of secular power to a government chosen democratically by some 130,000 Tibetans around the world.
In the indie comedy “She’s the He,” which premiered at SXSW on Sunday, high school seniors Alex and Ethan decide during the last week of school to pretend they’re trans so they can sneak into the women’s locker room. If that sounds like a premise lifted right out of MAGA-era attacks on trans rights, it’s because it is — that’s the point.
First-time writer-director Siobhan McCarthy dreamed up the idea just over a year ago, in February 2024, after discovering online that the one high school comedy that spoke to them as a teenager — the 2006 Amanda Bynes comedy “She’s the Man” — was just as formative for many other trans kids. That led to a conversation with their friend, Will Geare (who co-edited “She’s the He” with McCarthy), about the kinds of trans stories they both wished they’d been able to see when they were younger.
“I made a joke about, what if we took that conservative fear of [trans people] going into the bathrooms and we really played that out?” McCarthy tells Variety. “What would that look like?”
McCarthy finished the first draft of “She’s the He” just a few days later, and by July, they were shooting the film with a cast and crew that was almost entirely made up of trans, nonbinary and queer people — including all of the background actors. To achieve that cast, McCarthy leaned heavily on the tiny network of trans professionals within the industry.
“It was incredibly difficult to not only find trans people to be in a film — and this many trans people, which is fairly unprecedented — but to then find the right people for the roles we were trying to cast, which is the goal of any film,” McCarthy says.
Trans actor Emmett Preciado (“Good Trouble”), for example, landed the role of the school’s jacked, bullying quarterback, Jacob, through a recommendation from McCarthy’s friend, trans actor and activist Ian Alexander. After McCarthy cast queer actor Malia Pyles (“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin”) as the hottest and most popular girl in school, Pyles’ boyfriend, trans actor Jordan Gonzalez, suggested casting Misha Osherovich (“Freaky”) for the film’s critical central role, Ethan — who, after pretending to be trans, realizes that she actually is trans. And McCarthy didn’t find comedian Nico Carney, who ended up playing Ethan’s horn-dog BFF Alex, until a week before filming started.
“I had no idea if he could act,” McCarthy says. “I’d just seen his stand up. When we got into that rehearsal room the first day and he did the first scene, I finally, finally breathed a sigh of relief, because I knew we had a movie.”
After “She’s the He” opened to a standing ovation in Austin, McCarthy spoke with Variety about their inspirations for the movie, the “painful” experience of making it during the 2024 presidential election, and why they hope the film — which does not yet have distribution — will make it into movie theaters.
What was the first impetus to make you want to tell this story?
It was complicated. It ended up being a trip back to my hometown, where I happened to walk by my high school. It got me thinking about what it felt like to be young and to be dissociated from your experience. Because when you don’t necessarily know that you’re trans yet, the basics of life become very difficult to comprehend. Even if someone’s saying “I love you,” if they’re saying it to you from the perspective of the wrong gender, it doesn’t sound like “I love you” the way that it does to other people. In thinking about that, it was hard to not think about the movies that I grew up with and what broke through that haze of being disassociated.
Like what?
“She’s the Man,” Amanda Bynes, that movie! I rewatched it, and realized that there were a lot of trans people who had rewatched that movie recently as well and had started to talk on Twitter and on Tiktok about how they wish they had stories like that, those Shakespearean gender swap stories that were genuine to the trans experience.
All of that happened in the span of 24 hours, and at the end of that 24 hours, I was having conversation with my coeditor [Will Geare] about what we wish we had seen, because they’re trans as well. I made a joke about, what if we took that conservative fear of [trans people] going into the bathrooms and we really played that out? What would that look like? It started out entirely as a joke between the two of us. I wrote a draft in 24 hours of the entire movie. Gave it to Will. Will read it, gave me some notes. I took it back, rewrote it. We did that for about three days, and the first draft was done, and that was 13 months before today.
Did you know right away that everyone in the cast would be queer, trans or nonbinary?
That was a line that I was willing to die on, because I knew that the movie would not work if I was casting heterosexual, cis people — and specifically cis men, in the roles of those two leading boys, Alex and Jacob, who are such a representation of a lot of the men that I grew up with. A lot of trans men, through lived experience, have a nuanced understanding of what it means to engage with some of the toxicity that can be thrust upon cis boys, and that allows them to play in that field with a little more lucidity. That’s not to say that cis men don’t have that lucidity, but I knew that in order for me to be able to talk to my cast and communicate clearly, I was going to have to be talking to trans men, because they would speak the same language as me.
You were shooting and editing in the thick of the 2024 presidential campaign, which became so centered on anti-trans messaging. What was it like to have that in the background as you were putting your movie together, especially since the Republican talking point about trans kids in locker rooms was one of the main inspirations for the film?
It was incredibly painful. It’s hard to overstate the psychological weight of that messaging on everyone involved in this film when we are trying to make something that is centering trans joy. I had to turn around the movie in six weeks to get it to South By. And all six of those weeks, every week, it felt like the stakes were ratcheting up. Every week, something new was being said. Some new bill was being posited that was potentially going to strip my rights, going to strip the rights of children who I care about, going to strip rights of my friends.
The only thing that really kept me going during that, and I think kept a lot of us going during that, was realizing how strong our community has been in the face of this oppression. There are so many generations who come before us who have done incredible work and incredible things against unbelievable odds. But it also was scary, because it made the future of this film uncertain. When you’re watching the figurehead of the country come out every day and say, “You, specifically, who are making this movie. You people. We don’t want to hear from you. We don’t want to see you. We don’t want to think about you. We don’t even want you to have the basic rights to live.” Making a movie that was not only showcasing this many trans people and putting this many trans people right in their line of sight, but also talking about the thing that they were saying back at us, was absolutely terrifying. I’m so happy to be here now, but it was a lot.
What is your hope for this movie? Where would you love this movie to live to get to the audience you want to see it?
We very much see this movie in the vein of “Bottoms” or these queer movies that are beginning to break through to the mainstream. So much of the goal of creating this was making a movie that really did represent the trans community, and really is for the trans community, but that was accessible for cis audiences and heterosexual audiences. We basically wanted to take the bubble that was all those movies we grew up on and just expand the part of it that hadn’t included trans people. So we are really hoping to get this into theaters. There’s something powerful, I think, about seeing this many trans people in an AMC or a Regal next to “Mission: Impossible” or these other blockbusters, because that inherently makes a statement as well that we are here and we’re just like you.
This film came together so fast. I can imagine a lot of your decisions were made on instinct, but it reminded me so much of the independent queer movies from the 1990s. Was that something you were going for?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, those movies live deep in my psyche. “But I’m a Cheerleader” was quintessential to my identity as a human being. But so many of these decisions, I think, were made on instinct. I animated everything in the film. I wrote the score with my brother. I edited the film with Will. All of this movie ended up having to be my brain child in a lot of ways, because this turnaround was so tight that I just didn’t have access to reach out to other people. But as it started to come together, it became clear that, because Will and I both grew up on those ’90s queer movies, we were referencing those instinctually.
The animated notebook scribbles throughout the film also evoked “Heartstopper” for me. Was that consciously on your mind?
Oh, “Heartstopper” is very much in my mind. “Heartstopper” was a huge show for me on a comfort level. I’m the older end of Gen Z, and I do find that my references skew from TikTok to those old ’90s queer movies. I want the movie to be a representation of a lot of queer history. Also, I’m trying to make a movie for my generation, for young people. There’s not a lot of people right now who are getting to speak to the experience of growing up as part of Gen Z or Gen Alpha. There is a collage aesthetic to the film, because that’s just inherent to my experience growing up, getting so much information in so many different forms of media shot into my eyes.
Dozens of Tibetan protesters clashed with police outside the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi on Monday as Tibetans living in exile marked the 66th anniversary of their uprising against China that was crushed by Chinese forces.
As in past years, police blocked the protesters from entering the embassy and briefly detained some of them after wrestling them to the ground.
Hundreds also marched in the north Indian town of Dharamshala, the seat of the exiled Tibetan government and home of Dalai Lama, their 89-year-old spiritual leader. Separately, about a hundred Tibetan women gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, an area designated for protests close to Parliament.
The protesters shouted anti-China slogans, carried Tibetan flags and played the national anthems of Tibet and India.
India considers Tibet to be part of China, although it hosts the Tibetan exiles. The 1959 independence uprising was quelled by the Chinese army, forcing Dalai Lama and his followers into exile in India.
Many had their faces painted in colors of the Tibetan national flag. The demonstrators observed a minute of silence to remember Tibetans who lost their lives in the struggle against China. Monks, activists, nuns and schoolchildren marched across the town with banners reading, “Free Tibet” and “Remember, Resist, Return.”
Penpa Tsering — the president of the Central Tibetan Administration, as the exiled Tibetan government calls itself — accused China’s leadership of carrying out a “deliberate and dangerous strategy to eliminate the very identity of the Tibetan people.”
“This marks the darkest and most critical period in the history of Tibet,” Tsering told the gathering. “As we commemorate the Tibetan National Uprising Day, we honor our brave martyrs, and express solidarity with our brothers and sisters inside Tibet who continue to languish under the oppressive Chinese government.”
About 540 Indians lured into a cyber crime network with fake job offers have been rescued from Thailand and other countries. An Indian Air Force (IAF) flight carrying 283 rescued nationals returned yesterday and a second flight will bring back the rest from Mae Sot today. At least 42 of them are from the Telugu states, said Union Minister Bandi Sanjay, sharing information about the repatriation process.
These nationals were lured with fake job offers and sold to fake call centres involved in cyber fraud in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. “These persons were subsequently made to indulge in cybercrime and engage in other fraudulent activities in scam centres operating in regions along the Myanmar-Thailand border,” said the Ministry of External Affairs.
The Myanmar army rescued them.
Indian embassies in Myanmar and Thailand secured the repatriation in coordination with the local authorities, the MEA said. They were brought to Mae Sot city in Thailand from where they are being flown to Delhi.
The Golden Triangle Region in Southeast Asia, where the international borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet, is a cyber crime hotspot where such fake call centres operate.
The government said it keeps warning of such rackets that target Indians with fake job offers. It has advised people to verify the foreign employers through the Indian missions abroad, the recruiting agents, and companies before accepting any such job offer.
During her nine-month long extended stay at the ISS, Sunita Williams has undertaken several projects and experiments. (File)(X/@NASA)
Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams, who embarked on a journey to space last year, which was originally supposed to last eight days, has been there for nine months now.
Williams, along with her fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore, went to the International Space Station aboard a Boeing Starliner on June 5, 2024. However, after the Starliner witnessed helium leaks and other technical glitches after its first crewed mission, the two astronauts got stuck at the ISS.
After a long wait, Williams’ return is now in sight as the SpaceX Crew-10 mission is set to launch on either March 12 or 13. Williams and her fellow crewmates at the ISS will head out on March 19 after a week-long handover procedure with the Crew-10.
A look at Sunita William’s time in space
Sunita Williams not just piloted the Boeing Starliner which took her and Butch Wilmore to the ISS, but also helped develop it. The project cost NASA 4.3 billion dollars
During her nine-month-long extended stay at the ISS, Sunita Williams has undertaken several projects and experiments. She has helped with cleaning and maintaining the ISS, which is the size of a football field, during her stay there, reported NDTV.
Along with maintenance and cleaning, she has also helped replace several old instruments on the space station.
Williams, along with her Boeing Starliner mate Butch Wilmore and one more astronaut, Nick Hague, has “completed more than 900 hours of research between more than 150 unique scientific experiments and technology demonstrations during their stay aboard the orbiting laboratory,” said NASA.
In order to stay fit to be able to navigate through the ISS, Williams also undertook extensive weight training aboard the space station. There were concerns about her health as well during her time at the ISS, however, she clarified later that she weighed the same as she did during her arrival
During her stay, Sunita Williams has also broke the record for total spacewalking time by a female astronaut by completing a total of 62 hours and nine minutes of spacewalk through all her missions. She spent 5 hours 26 minutes during her last spacewalk on January 30 and around six hours on January 16, the NDTV report said. During one of her earlier visits to the ISS, she also ran a marathon in space.
Sunita Williams also installed hardware for the Packed Bed Reactor Experiment: Water Recovery Series (PBRE-WRS) investigation. According to NASA, packed bed reactors are systems that “pack” materials such as pellets or beads inside a structure to increase contact between any liquids and gasses flowing through it. The experiment is determined to examine how gravity affects these systems aboard the International Space Station, and results could help scientists design better reactors for water recovery, thermal management, fuel cells, and other applications.
There is an ongoing examination of microgravity’s effects on biomanufacturing engineered bacteria and yeast on the International Space Station. Sunita Williams posed with bacteria and yeast samples for Rhodium Biomanufacturing 03, which is the part of the examination.
Hundreds of roofs in the informal settlements of India’s western Gujarat state have been painted in a reflective, white coating over the last two months to try to keep their occupants cooler as the hottest time of year approaches.
The effort, which involves 400 households in Ahmedabad, is part of a global scientific trial to study how indoor heat impacts people’s health and economic outcomes in developing countries – and how “cool roofs” might help.
“Traditionally, home is where people have come to find shelter and respite against external elements,” said Aditi Bunker, an epidemiologist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany who is leading the project, supported by the UK-based Wellcome Trust.
“Now, we’re in this position where people are living in precarious housing conditions, where the thing that was supposed to be protecting them is actually increasing their exposure to heat.”
As climate change has made India’s summers more extreme, Ahmedabad has suffered temperatures in excess of 46 C (115 F) in recent years.
In the Vanzara Vas slum in the Narol area of the city, which has more than 2,000 dwellings, most of them airless, one-room homes, residents that are part of the project, such as Nehal Vijaybhai Bhil, say they have already noticed a difference.
“My refrigerator doesn’t heat up any more and the house feels cooler. I sleep so much better and my electricity bill is down,” said Bhil, whose roof was painted in January.
Painters apply liquid-applied membrane (LAM) coating that according to the authorities helps to bring down the temperature inside the shanties at a slum in Ahmedabad, India, January 30, 2025. REUTERS/Amit Dave Purchase Licensing Rights
Across the world, heatwaves that, prior to the industrial revolution, had a one-in-10 chance of occurring in any given year are nearly three times as likely, according to a 2022 study in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
By painting roofs with a white coating that contains highly reflective pigments such as titanium dioxide, Bunker and her team are sending more of the sun’s radiation back to the atmosphere and preventing it from being absorbed.
“In a lot of these low socioeconomic homes, there’s nothing to stop the heat transfer coming down – there’s no insulation barrier from the roof,” Bunker said.
Before joining Bunker’s experiment, Arti Chunara said she would cover her roof with plastic sheets and spread grass over them.
Some days, she and her family sat outside for most of the day, going into the house only for two to three hours when the heat was bearable.
The trial in Ahmedabad will run for one year, and scientists will collect health and indoor environment data from residents living under a cool roof – and from those who do not.
Other study sites are in Burkina Faso, Mexico and the island of Niue in the South Pacific, spanning a variety of building materials and climates.
A mural depicting late soccer legend Diego Armando Maradona is pictured outside the Diego Maradona stadium, before a celebration marking his 61st birth date, in Buenos Aires, Argentina October 30, 2021. REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Argentina will begin a trial this week into the medical team of late soccer icon Diego Maradona over homicide by negligence, a case that has charged up emotions in the country where the World Cup winner still commands almost God-like reverence.
The trial, expected to last for months, starts on Tuesday, over four years after Maradona’s death in November 2020 from heart failure at age 60 after undergoing brain surgery days earlier. His medical team generally rejects the charges.
A court in San Isidro, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, will listen to nearly 120 testimonies. The defendants are charged with “simple homicide with eventual intent” in the treatment of the former Boca Juniors and Napoli player.
Maradona’s death rocked the South American nation where he was revered, prompting a period of mourning and angry finger pointing about who was to blame after the icon’s years-long battle with addiction and ill health.
Nicknamed “D10S”, a play on the Spanish word for god, and “Pelusa” for his prominent hair, Maradona battled alcohol and drug addiction, but was adored – including in tattoos for his flawed genius that led Argentina to World Cup glory in 1986.
That sharpened anger around his death, while a medical board appointed to investigate the circumstances concluded in early 2021 that the soccer star’s medical team had acted in an “inappropriate, deficient and reckless manner”.
“I hope there’s justice because they killed him. Diego (Maradona) should be alive,” Argentina merchant Luis Alberto Suarez told Reuters in Buenos Aires. “They didn’t take care of him.”
A medical board appointed to investigate Maradona’s death found in early 2021 that the soccer star’s medical team acted in an “inappropriate, deficient and reckless manner”.
Not everyone was so sure, however.
“I can only speak from what I see from the outside. But we can’t say if they were wrong or not,” said self-employed worker Martin Milei.
“In hindsight, they got it completely wrong. But I think there are more people responsible than what’s being said.”
Unemployed Argentine Pablo Knopfler said he hoped that the trial would uncover the truth.
General view of the statue of late Pope John Paul II and Gemelli Hospital, where Pope Francis is admitted for ongoing pneumonia treatment, in Rome, Italy, March 10, 2025. Purchase Licensing Rights
Pope Francis is no longer in immediate danger of death and is responding well to treatment in hospital, the Vatican said on Monday, in a sign of progress as the 88-year-old pontiff battles double pneumonia.
Francis has been in Rome’s Gemelli hospital for more than three weeks. He was admitted on February 14 with a severe respiratory infection that has required evolving treatment.
In its latest medical update, the Vatican said the pope’s doctors had decided to lift an earlier “guarded” prognosis, meaning the pontiff was no longer in immediate danger.
“The improvements recorded in previous days have further consolidated, as confirmed by both blood tests and clinical assessments, as well as a good response to his drug treatments,” it said.
Although the doctors lifted their earlier prognosis, the Vatican said they still expect Francis “to continue medical drug treatment in a hospital setting for further days.”
No exact timeframe was given for his discharge.
The pope has been described as being in a stable or improving condition for the past week, following two crises of “acute respiratory insufficiency” on March 3.
The Vatican said earlier on Monday that Francis was continuing his treatment and was undergoing respiratory physiotherapy to help with his breathing.
The pontiff, who has used a wheelchair in recent years due to knee and back pain, also continued with some physical therapy to help with mobility, it said.
The pope is receiving oxygen in hospital, using a small oxygen hose under his nose during the day and non-invasive mechanical ventilation at night while he sleeps.
LONGEST PUBLIC ABSENCE OF PAPACY
The pope has experienced several bouts of ill health over the last two years and is prone to lung infections because he had pleurisy as a young adult and had part of one lung removed.
Double pneumonia is a serious infection in both lungs that can inflame and scar them, making it difficult to breathe.
Francis, who will celebrate the 12th anniversary of his 2013 election as pope on Thursday, has not been seen in public since entering hospital, the longest such absence of his papacy.
Doctors not involved in Francis’ care said the pope is likely to face a long, fraught road to recovery, given his age and other medical conditions.
The pope, who is known to work himself to exhaustion, has continued to work from hospital.
On Sunday, the pope held his third meeting during his recovery in hospital with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s second-ranking official, and Parolin’s deputy.
Tesla’s stock has dropped by nearly half in three months. Even so, investors are still debating whether Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle maker remains overpriced.
The company’s market capitalization has dropped 45% since hitting an all-time high of $1.5 trillion on December 17, erasing most of the gains the stock made after CEO Musk helped finance the election victory of U.S. President Donald Trump.
And yet Tesla (TSLA.O), continues to fetch a valuation far above those of the world’s biggest automotive and technology firms, judging by standard financial metrics. That’s because most investors and analysts have bought Musk’s pitch that the world’s most-valuable automaker isn’t really a car company at all, but rather an artificial-intelligence pioneer that will soon unleash a revolution in robotaxis and humanoid robots.
Tesla’s electric-vehicle business accounts for almost all of its revenue but less than a quarter of its stock-market value, according to a Reuters review of more than a dozen analyses by banks and investment firms. The bulk of its worth rests on hopes for autonomous vehicles Tesla hasn’t yet delivered, despite Musk’s promises in every year since 2016 that driverless Teslas would arrive no later than the following year.
The stock’s decline since December stems from falling vehicle sales and profits; protests of Musk’s political activity, including his mass firings of U.S. government workers as a senior Trump advisor; and investor worries that politics are distracting the world’s richest man from tending to his cash cow. Still, Tesla’s market capitalization remains up about $65 billion since the election – an amount higher than the entire value of General Motors (GM.N)
After this article was published on Monday, Tesla shares fell by more than 15%, slicing off more than $125 billion in market value, after UBS cut its forecast for the automaker’s first-quarter deliveries. The decline came in tandem with a broader market selloff on worries about tariffs and recession fears, with the Nasdaq losing 4% and the S&P 500 dropping 2.7%.
Tesla’s total worth of $845 billion as of Friday’s close still tops the next nine most-valuable major automakers combined, which collectively sold about 44 million cars last year, compared to Tesla’s 1.8 million.
Investors have long bet on Musk’s visions of Tesla’s tomorrow rather than its profits today. But the widening gap between its real-world performance and analysts’ earnings estimates for unborn products has prompted some to warn of irrational exuberance.
“For how much longer can the stock remain divorced from the fundamentals?” JP Morgan analyst Ryan Brinkman wrote in January, after Tesla reported poor earnings and its first-ever annual vehicle-sales decline.
Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. In July, Musk said investors who don’t believe Tesla would “solve vehicle autonomy” should “sell their Tesla stock.”
ROBOTAXI PIVOT
Tesla’s previous peak value of more than $1.2 trillion came in 2021, in response to concrete achievements. Soaring sales of its ground-breaking Model 3 and Model Y had proved that EVs could sell profitably in mass volumes. Musk vowed then that Tesla would produce even cheaper EVs and sell 20 million vehicles annually by 2030, nearly double what the world’s largest automaker, Toyota (7203.T), sells now.
Musk, however, shifted from the mass-volume goal last year. In April, Reuters reported Tesla had killed a long-awaited, all-new $25,000 “Model 2” that investors had counted on to drive growth. Since then, Musk has pitched investors on Tesla’s robotaxi focus.
The pivot was persuasive: Tesla shares jumped 71% from last year’s low in April through the November election, even as its EV sales stalled and profits fell.
Then the stock nearly doubled in the weeks after Trump’s election. Musk spent more than $250 million supporting Trump and now serves as his top advisor on slashing government staff and regulations.
Musk’s political clout has convinced bullish analysts that Trump will clear regulatory roadblocks to deploying a vast fleet of Tesla robotaxis. Tesla, however, already faces little oversight from many U.S. states, which control most autonomous-vehicle regulation. Texas, where Musk promises to launch fare-collecting robotaxis by June, has barred cities from regulating them.
“There’s absolutely nothing stopping him from releasing this self-driving technology right now,” said Gordon Johnson, chief executive of investment-advisory firm GLJ Research, which recommends shorting Tesla’s stock. The tech isn’t road-ready, Johnson argues: “If he released it tomorrow, the jig would be up. These things would be wrecking across America.”
Tesla has faced lawsuits and federal investigations into accidents, including fatalities, involving the driver-assistance systems it has marketed as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. The company warns consumers, opens new tab the systems don’t make its cars autonomous and require drivers to pay strict attention. Musk has long said Tesla’s technology will soon be safer than a human driver.
FALLING SALES, RISING COMPETITION
The automaker’s core EV business is struggling. The only vehicle Tesla has launched since the 2020 Model Y is the Cybertruck. The triangular pickup had sales of 38,965 units last year, Cox Automotive estimates, well below the 250,000 that Musk initially predicted Tesla would produce by 2025. Tesla has also cut prices on the now-aging models 3 and Y amid slowing electric-vehicle demand globally and rising competition, especially in China, where EVs start below $10,000.
New data also show sharp Tesla-sales declines this year in European markets following Musk’s embrace of far-right political movements there.
Tesla now faces headwinds from the president Musk helped elect. Trump, a frequent EV critic, has called for scrapping EV subsidies and policies that have added billions of dollars to Tesla’s bottom line. Musk has dismissed the impact on Tesla of losing subsidies, saying rivals would suffer more.
When Tesla reported a 20% drop in annual operating profit in January, analysts on the earnings call asked no questions about Tesla’s financials or falling EV sales. They focused instead on Musk’s promises of “autonomous ride-hailing” in Austin, Texas, by June and a wider driverless-vehicle launch by year-end. Tesla shares rose 3% the next day.
Tesla still trades at huge premiums, as measured by forward price-to-earnings ratios. The measure is used by investors to judge whether stocks are fairly valued. A high ratio suggests shares might be overpriced.
People look at a Tesla Cybertruck at a Tesla showroom in New York City, U.S., January 2, 2025. REUTERS/Adam Gray/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Tesla’s forward PE ratio is more than nine times the average of the next 25 most-valuable automakers. It’s quadruple that of BYD (002594.SZ), the Chinese automaker that passed Tesla last year as the world’s top EV seller.
Unlike Tesla, BYD also has a booming business in gas-electric hybrids, driving total 2024 sales to about 4.2 million units, more than double Tesla’s deliveries. Yet BYD’s market capitalization is less than a sixth of Tesla’s.
Tesla’s forward PE ratio also is more than double or triple those of tech giants Nvidia (NVDA.O), Apple (AAPL.O), Meta Platforms (META.O), Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Amazon.com (AMZN.O), and Microsoft (MSFT.O), — the other six high-flying stocks, along with Tesla, known as the Magnificent Seven.
OPTIMISTIC MODELS
Bulls discount standard financial metrics for judging Tesla’s potential, arguing Musk is singularly capable of leading a transportation revolution. He has said robotaxis and robots will make Tesla the “most valuable company in the world by far.”
Brian Mulberry, client-portfolio manager at Tesla investor Zacks Investment Management, said Musk “always pulls off the technology,” despite long-running concerns about his “mad-scientist personality.”
Most analyst models reviewed by Reuters remain bullish.
Such models typically justify Tesla’s market value by breaking it into several categories: Its auto business, including services such as EV charging (now 90% of revenue); its energy-generation and storage business (10% of revenue); and three embryonic businesses: robotaxis; licensing or subscriptions for self-driving technology; and Optimus humanoid robots. Three such models in January rated EV sales as a relatively minor factor in Tesla’s expected growth.
Truist Securities attributed just 9% of Tesla’s value to car sales, 21% to driverless-tech services, 17% to robotaxis and 34% to robots.
Bank of America’s model attributes about half of Tesla’s value to robotaxis and 28% to self-driving software subscriptions.
Morgan Stanley attributes 21% to robotaxis and 39% to subscriptions for autonomous-tech and other services.
Tesla investor Ark Investment Management projects the stock will hit $2,600 by 2029, with robotaxis accounting for 88% of the company’s value. Ark forecasts Tesla could produce millions of robotaxis by then, generating about $760 billion in annual revenue. That would be more than Walmart, the world’s largest company by revenue.
Tasha Keeney, Ark’s director of investment analysis and institutional strategies, said she believes Tesla will achieve such growth by slashing the cost-per-mile of ride-hailing, making human drivers obsolete.
“It’s cheaper than driving your personal car,” she said. “Maybe people will stop even driving.”
TESLA TECH ‘DOES NOT WORK SAFELY’
Trump could potentially clear the path for driverless cars with no steering wheels or pedals because the federal government regulates the safety of vehicle designs. Musk last October unveiled a concept car with such a configuration, the two-door Cybercab, saying it would go into production in 2026.
But individual states govern autonomous-vehicle travel on public roads, limiting Trump’s influence. Some states, including Texas, have few rules. Tesla’s largest U.S. market, California, requires extensive driverless testing under state oversight before granting robotaxi permits.
A Trump move to loosen robotaxi regulation could benefit all competitors, not just Tesla. The tiny U.S. robotaxi industry, for now, is dominated by Alphabet’s Waymo, which operates hundreds of driverless taxis in cities including Los Angeles and Phoenix.
Waymo and most other autonomous-tech developers seek to ensure safety with many overlapping technologies, including artificial intelligence, radar and lidar. Tesla aims to develop much cheaper robotaxis by relying solely on cameras and AI.
Some investors doubt Tesla has found a unique path to cut-rate robotaxis. Mark Spiegel, an investment manager at Stanphyl Capital Partners, is shorting Tesla’s stock, an investment that pays off if shares fall.
Tesla’s approach to robotaxis “does not work safely and never will without radar and lidar,” Spiegel said.
And China’s BYD said last month it would offer — for free, as a standard feature — a driver-assistance technology similar to the Full Self-Driving system that Tesla sells in China for more than $8,000.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs have spooked investors, with fears of an economic downturn driving a stock market sell-off that has wiped out $4 trillion from the S&P 500’s peak last month, when Wall Street was cheering much of Trump’s agenda.
A barrage of new Trump policies has increased uncertainty for businesses, consumers and investors, notably back-and-forth tariff moves against major trading partners like Canada, Mexico and China.
“We’ve seen clearly a big sentiment shift,” said Ayako Yoshioka, senior investment strategist at Wealth Enhancement. “A lot of what has worked is not working now.”
The stock market selloff deepened on Monday. The benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX), fell 2.7%, its biggest daily drop of the year. The Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), slid 4%, its largest one-day decline since September 2022.
The S&P 500 on Monday closed down 8.6% from its February 19 record high, shedding over $4 trillion in market value since then and nearing a 10% decline that would represent a correction for the index. The tech-heavy Nasdaq ended Thursday down more than 10% from its December high.
Trump over the weekend declined to predict whether the U.S. could face a recession as investors worried about the impact of his trade policy.
“The amount of uncertainty that has been created by the tariff wars with regard to Canada, Mexico and Europe, is causing boards and C-suites to reconsider the pathway forward,” Peter Orszag, CEO of Lazard, speaking at the CERAWeek conference in Houston.
“People can understand ongoing tensions with China, but the Canada, Mexico, and Europe part is confusing. Unless that gets resolved over the next month or so, this could do real damage to the economic prospects of the US and M&A activity,” Orszag said.
Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), on Monday slashed its first-quarter profit estimates by half, sending its shares down 14% in aftermarket action. CEO Ed Bastian blamed heightened U.S. economic uncertainty.
Investors are also watching whether lawmakers can pass a funding bill to avert a partial federal government shutdown. A U.S. report on inflation looms on Wednesday.
“The Trump administration seems a little more accepting of the idea that they’re OK with the market falling, and they’re potentially even OK with a recession in order to exact their broader goals,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird. “I think that’s a big wake up call for Wall Street.”
The percentage of total corporate equities and mutual fund shares that are owned by the bottom 50% of the U.S. population, ranked by wealth, stands at about 1%, while the same measure for the top 10% of the population by wealth stood at 87%, according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data as of July 2024.
The S&P 500 tallied back-to-back gains of over 20% in 2023 and 2024, led by megacap technology and tech-related stocks such as Nvidia (NVDA.O), and Tesla (TSLA.O), that have struggled so far in 2025, dragging major indexes.
On Monday, the S&P 500’s technology sector (.SPLRCT), dropped 4.3%, while Apple (AAPL.O), and Nvidia both fell about 5%. Tesla tumbled 15%, shedding about $125 billion in value.
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., February 12, 2025. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Other risk assets were also punished, with bitcoin dropping 5%.
Some defensive areas of the market held up better, with the utilities sector (.SPLRCU), logging a 1% daily gain. Safe-haven U.S. government debt saw more demand, with benchmark 10-year Treasury yields, which move inversely to prices, down to about 4.22%.
INVESTOR UNEASE
The S&P 500 has given up all gains recorded since Trump’s November 5 election, and it is down nearly 3% in that time. Hedge funds reduced exposure to stocks on Friday at the largest amount in more than two years, according to a Goldman Sachs note released on Monday.
Investors had expressed optimism that Trump’s expected pro-growth agenda including tax cuts and deregulation would benefit stocks, but uncertainty over tariffs and other changes including federal workforce cuts, has dampened sentiment.
“It was the overwhelming consensus that everything was going to be this great environment once President Trump came into office,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading.
“Every time you have structural change you’re going to have uncertainty and you’re going to have friction,” O’Rourke said. “It’s understandable people are starting to be a little concerned and starting to take profits.”
Even with the recent selloff, stock market valuations remain significantly above historic averages. The S&P 500 as of Friday was at just above 21 times earnings estimates for the next year, compared to its long-term average forward P/E of 15.8, according to LSEG Datastream.
“Many people have been worried about elevated valuations among U.S. equities for some time and looking for the catalyst for a market correction,” said Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst at AJ Bell. “A combination of concerns about a trade war, geopolitical tensions and an uncertain economic outlook could be that catalyst.”
Investors’ equity positioning has fallen in recent weeks, dipping to slightly underweight for the first time since briefly hitting that level in August, Deutsche Bank analysts said in a note on Friday.
A further retreat to the bottom of the historic range for equities weighting, as seen during Trump’s U.S.-China trade war in 2018-2019, could drag the S&P 500 to as low as 5,300, or down another 5.5% from current levels, they added.
In another sign of growing investor unease, the Cboe Volatility index (.VIX), on Monday reached its highest closing level since August.
The CBP One app is being repurposed to allow undocumented migrants to self-deport.
The Trump administration is repurposing a mobile application – originally created to facilitate asylum appointments – into a way for undocumented migrants already in the US to “self-deport”.
The app, known as CBP Home, allows migrants to submit an “intent to depart”, which US Customs and Border Patrol says offers them a chance to leave without “harsher consequences”.
US officials have repeatedly suggested that undocumented migrants in the country should leave voluntarily, rather than be arrested and subject to deportation.
This is the latest move in the White House’s effort to dramatically overhaul the US immigration system, which has included promises of mass detentions.
Originally launched as CBP One in 2020, the mobile application was expanded during the Biden administration to allow prospective migrants to book appointments to appear at a port of entry.
At the time, officials credited the application with helping reduce detentions at the border and portrayed the technology as part of a larger effort to protect asylum seekers making the often dangerous journey.
Now, on the newly rebranded application, undocumented migrants identify themselves and declare their intention to leave the country.
In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that by self-deporting through the app, migrants “may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream”.
“If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return,” she added.
The app also asks migrants whether they have “enough money to depart the United States” and whether they have a “valid, unexpired passport from your original country of citizenship”.
The BBC has contacted DHS for further details about how the process works once the forms on the app are filled out.
CBP Home can also be used to apply and pay for I-94 entry and exit cards up to seven days before travel, book inspections for perishable cargo and check wait times at US border crossings.
According to DHS, the app is meant to complement a $200m (£155m) domestic and international ad campaign calling for undocumented migrants to “stay out and leave now”.
The Trump administration moved quickly to scrap the CBP One app as part of a larger shift in immigration strategy. It also paused parole programmes, and an uptick in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the country followed.
In late February, the administration said it would create a national registry for undocumented migrants and those failing to sign up could possibly face criminal prosecution.
A 2100 human, according to a study, will have a hunch back and claw -like hands(Image: Maple Holistics )
Experts have examined how technology is affecting the human body and have suggested that we may see some dramatic changes by the year 2100.
To fully realise the impact everyday tech has on us, experts conducted scientific research to help build a 3D design of what they suspect could be the physical changes humans may experience. The research comes after consistent use of smartphones, laptops and other tech we use on a daily basis.
Scientists named their futuristic model “Mindy”, based on their predictions for humans living in 2100. The model appears to have a hunched back from hours of sitting over computers and looking at phones.
Their design also shows Mindy having bigger neck muscles, which help to compensate for her poor posture; a thicker skull to protect from radiation; and a smaller brain that has shrunk from leading what they considered to be a predominantly inactive lifestyle.
A health and wellness expert at Maple Holistics who created the images, Caleb Backe, said: “Spending hours looking down at your phone strains your neck and throws your spine off balance. Consequently, the muscles in your neck have to expend extra effort to support your head.
“Sitting in front of the computer at the office for hours on end also means that your torso is pulled out in front of your hips rather than being stacked straight and aligned.”
Jason O’Brien, head of TollFreeForwarding.com, the company that produced the model and was behind the study, described these potential physical changes as what he considers the “trade-off” that comes with the benefits of modern technology use.
Speaking in 2019, he said: “Technology gives us convenience, connectivity, entertainment, and so much more – but there is a trade-off. Overexposure to technology can sometimes come to the detriment of our health.”
Experts predict that in fewer than 100 years, humans may also have claw-like hands after increased amounts of time gripping their mobile phones.
Dr Nikola Djordjevic, from Med Alert Help, said: “The way we hold our phones can cause strain at certain points of contact – causing ‘text claw’ and ’90-degree elbow’, also known as cubital tunnel syndrome.
“This syndrome is caused by pressure or the stretching of the ulnar nerve, which runs in a groove on the inner side of the elbow.
“This causes numbness or a tingling sensation in the ring and little fingers, forearm pain, and weakness in the hands – keeping the elbow bent for a long time.” As well as this, the scientists suggested that humans develop a double eyelid to protect their eyes from harmful light.
The research mainly centred around smartphones and acknowledged the growing concerns that radiofrequency radiation emitted from smartphones could cause when exposed to the brain.
Given the impact, the study shows the potential for Mindy to develop a thicker skull, and along with it, a smaller brain. The invisible change of her brain size is based on the scientific theory of idiocracy.
Jamie White, a reporter for Alex Jones’ Infowars, was killed in a suspected homicide outside of his home in Austin, Texas just before midnight on Sunday.
“We are deeply saddened to inform you that Infowars Reporter Jamie White was brutally murdered around midnight Sunday night due, in part, to the policies of the Soros Austin, TX D.A. Jose Garza,” announced Jones in a social media post on Monday. “We pledge that Jamie’s tragic death will not be in vain, and those responsible for this senseless violence will be brought to justice.”
Austin Police Department found White outside his apartment complex at around 11:59 p.m. on Sunday with “obvious signs of trauma.” While White was quickly transported to the hospital, he died of his injuries soon after arriving. Austin police are investigating White’s death as a homicide.
“Jamie was murdered last night outside of his home, just a few miles away from our studios,” said Jones in a video on Monday. “We sent some people over this morning when he didn’t answer the phone because he’s always here early, loves to work, loves to fight tyranny, loves to promote freedom, and when they got to the apartment complex there was yellow tape everywhere, blood all over the parking lot.”
Jones continued, “I’m gonna talk about in a moment who I hold responsible for this, and who is responsible for this, and who are accomplices to Jamie and so many others’ murder,” before describing Garza – whose campaign for district attorney was funded by billionaire Democratic Party donor George Soros – as “even worse than Alvin Bragg” and “probably the worst in the country.”
The Infowars founder cited the Austin Police Department’s budget being cut by one-third, as well as Garza’s own documented conflicts with Austin police, before arguing, “He’s doing exactly what he was put in by Soros to do, and I lay all of this squarely at the feet of these D.A.’s and at the Soros crime syndicate and at the Democratic Party. They are the ones that administratively cut the police, prosecute the police.”
A crew member remains missing after an oil tanker and cargo ship collided in the North Sea off the coast of East Yorkshire.
Dozens of people abandoned the vessels after the crash just before 9.50am, with the Coastguard rescuing 36 people.
All 23 on board the oil tanker Stena Immaculate are accounted for – but one of the 14 crew members of the Solong cargo ship is still missing.
A Coastguard search was called off around 9.40pm, while both vessels were both still on fire.
One of the 36 people rescued was taken to hospital.
Sky News understands there is a five-mile air and sea exclusion zone around the location of the incident, which may be widened to 10 miles if later required.
Both ships are on fire following the collision
The Stena Immaculate was carrying jet fuel and was on a short-term charter to the US Navy at the time of the incident.
The cargo ship was reportedly carrying 15 containers of sodium cyanide and an unknown quantity of alcohol.
Two maritime security sources told Reuters there was “no indication” of any malicious activity or other actors involved in the incident.
‘Multiple explosions onboard’
US logistics group Crowley, which manages oil tanker Stena Immaculate, confirmed the vessel had released some jet fuel after sustaining a ruptured cargo tank.
The firm said it initiated its emergency vessel response plan and is “actively working with public agencies to contain the fire and secure the vessel”.
Crowley added: “Our first priority is the safety of the people and environment. We will provide more updates as information becomes available.”
Downing Street ‘monitoring situation’
The prime minister’s official spokesman said it was an “extremely concerning situation”.
He said: “We thank the emergency services for their rapid response. I understand the Department for Transport is working closely with the coastguard to help support the response to the incident.
“We’re obviously monitoring the situation, we’ll continue to coordinate the response and we’re grateful to emergency personnel for their continued efforts.”
Meanwhile, Hull City Council leader Mike Ross has called for the UK government to set out a rapid response plan in response to the events.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander later praised the work of the emergency services, adding: “The Maritime Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) has begun a preliminary assessment and I am working closely with the MCA (Maritime and Coastguard Agency) as they conduct an assessment of any counter pollution response which may be required over the coming days.”
Coastguard’s emergency message
Moments after the collision, a message broadcast by the Coastguard warned other ships to stay away from the area.
In audio shared on social media, the Coastguard can be heard warning Solong “has collided” with Stena Immaculate.
“Both vessels are abandoning,” the message continued.
“Vessels who have firefighting equipment or can assist with search and rescue, contact Humber Coastguard.
“Stena is carrying Jet-A1 fuel, which is on fire and in the water. Vessels – remain at safe distance.”
‘Inspectors are gathering evidence’
The Marine Accident Investigation Branch is now investigating the collision.
A spokesperson said: “Our team of inspectors and support staff are gathering evidence and undertaking a preliminary assessment of the accident to determine our next steps.”
The oil tanker was sailing under a US flag, while the Solong cargo ship was Portuguese-flagged, according to Marinetraffic.com.
Overall responsibility for investigating this collision rests with the flag states of the vessels – in this case, Portugal and the United States.
MAIB has an interest as the incident occurred in UK waters, UK authorities are co-ordinating the response, and the crews of both ships were recovered to the UK.
The Solong had been due to travel to Rotterdam in the Netherlands after departing from Grangemouth in Scotland on Monday morning, Marinetraffic.com shows.
Moving images on the tracking site suggest the oil tanker had remained stationary as the Solong headed straight towards it before the collision.
It is believed the Stena Immaculate, which was travelling from Greece to the UK, was anchored at the time.
David McFarlane, director Maritime Risk and Safety Consultants, told Sky News it can take up to an hour to raise an anchor – meaning the tanker might not have had time to get out of the way.
It comes as Martyn Boyers, chief executive of the Port of Grimsby East, said the container ship may have been on autopilot at the time of the crash.
“Autopilot just steers a course, they don’t deviate, there’s no bend in the sea,” he added.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Saudi Arabia ahead of his team having talks with America’s top diplomat on Tuesday.
Mr Zelenskyy will not be at the meeting with US secretary of state Marco Rubio, but Mr Zelenskyy’s team will try to improve relations following his disastrous 28 February visit to Washington, which descended into an Oval Office argument with President Donald Trump and vice president JD Vance.
Mr Zelenskyy with Prince Saud bin Mishaal, and Saudi commerce minister Majid bin Abdullah al Qasabi. Pic: AP
Mr Zelenskyy briefly met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday, after the end of the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio is also in Jeddah. He is not due to meet Mr Zelenskyy – but he held talks with Prince Mohammed to discuss Yemen and threats to ships from Houthis, Syria, and the reconstruction of Gaza.
During talks on Tuesday the Ukrainian team will try to convince the US to restore military aid and intelligence that had helped Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Speaking to reporters while travelling to Jeddah, Mr Rubio said if Ukraine and the US reach an understanding acceptable to Mr Trump, that could accelerate his administration’s push to peace talks.
“What we want to know is, are they interested [in] entering some sort of peace conversation and general outlines of the kinds of things they could consider, recognising that it has been a costly and bloody war for the Ukrainians,” Mr Rubio said.
“They have suffered greatly and their people have suffered greatly. And it’s hard in the aftermath of something like that to even talk about concessions, but that’s the only way this is going to end and prevent more suffering.”
He said: “I’m not going to set any conditions on what they have to or need to do. I think we want to listen to see how far they’re willing to go and then compare that to what the Russians want and see how far apart we truly are.”
He added: “The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things to end this conflict.”
Meanwhile, British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer spoke to Mr Trump on Monday ahead of the US-Ukraine meeting.
A Downing Street readout of the call said that Sir Keir told the president that “UK officials had been speaking to Ukraine officials over the weekend and they remain committed to a lasting peace”.
“The prime minister said he hoped there would be a positive outcome to the talks that would enable US aid and intelligence sharing to be restarted,” the statement said.
“The two leaders also spoke about the economic deal they had discussed at the White House and the prime minister welcomed the detailed conversations that had already happened to move this forward. Both leaders agreed to stay in touch.”
The European Union agreed last week to boost the continent’s defences and free up hundreds of billions of euros for security in response to the Trump administration’s shift in policy towards Ukraine.
Elon Musk called a Democratic senator a ‘traitor’ after he visited Ukraine. File pic: Reuters
A US senator has hit back at Elon Musk, saying the billionaire Trump adviser is “not a serious guy” after he branded the politician a “traitor” for visiting Ukraine.
Mark Kelly, the Democrat senator for Arizona and a former US navy combat pilot, made his third visit to Kyiv since 2023 earlier this month, meeting with wounded service members and Ukrainian officials.
Posting on X after he left the country, he said “what I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people”, and in a break from US President Donald Trump’s stance on negotiations, called for security guarantees in any peace deal.
“Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin,” he said.
Mr Musk, who also leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory department under the Trump administration, replied on X and said: “You are a traitor.”
Firing back at the Tesla chief, Mr Kelly said: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”
He then told reporters back in the US the billionaire is “obviously not a serious guy”.
It comes as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives in Saudi Arabia ahead of his team having talks with America’s top diplomat on Tuesday.
Mr Zelenskyy will not be at the meeting with US secretary of state Marco Rubio, but his team will try to improve relations following his disastrous 28 February visit to Washington, which descended into an Oval Office argument with the US president and vice president JD Vance.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama will talk divorce, newfound freedom, and friendship—but refuses to delve into politics—on a newly announced podcast with her brother, it was revealed Monday.
The New York Times disclosed the existence of the podcast, called IMO, which stands for “in my opinion,” and reviewed its first two episodes. The production, a video-led podcast, will be released to the public on Wednesday.
It features the former first lady and her brother, Craig Robinson, who is the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. The pair talk about a variety of subjects but sidestep politics and current affairs, instead opting for a lifestyle-themed format.
That does not mean they avoid heavy-hitting subjects, however. The pair opened up about Robinson’s divorce from his first wife, Janis Robinson, in 2000, according to the Times. The former college basketball coach remarried in 2006 to his current wife, Kelly McCrum Robinson. The Obamas, too, have faced a wave of speculation about marital troubles in recent months.
The pair also discuss Michelle’s marriage with her husband, former President Barack Obama, and his relationship with politics, the paper reported.
The couple has been dogged by persistent rumors about the state of their marriage, including that he had been dating actress Jennifer Aniston.
The Friends star denied a romance with Obama on Jimmy Kimmel Live, saying that she has only “met him once.”
“I know Michelle more than him,” she said.
While Michelle Obama may address her marriage on her new podcast, one area she is keen to avoid is politics, which she said in her 2018 memoir Becoming that she “never wanted to be involved in.”
The Times reports that she addresses this subject with her brother on IMO. As a pair, they also talk about their tough upbringing in Chicago, Ill. They shared a room in a small apartment in the city.
Obama also says that after years of Secret Service protection and restrictions, she has gotten back behind the wheel.
The paper states that hosts “mainly offered advice based on their life experiences” and will eventually welcome celebrity guests, some of whom appeared on Obama’s previous production, The Michelle Obama Podcast. This includes director Tyler Perry and new guests, like actors Seth Rogen and Keke Palmer.
On the second episode of the new show, the pair will be joined by writer, actress, and producer Issa Rae, who will speak about maintaining adult friendships.
The new show is produced by the Obamas’ media company, Higher Ground, alongside Audible, which is owned by Amazon.
One audience likely to be listening assiduously is Republicans, particularly President Donald Trump, because of her formidable polling if she were to run for president. When former President Joe Biden pulled out of the presidential race last year, Trump was fascinated by the prospect of running against her, best-selling author Michael Wolff revealed in his book All or Nothing, to the extent that he had decided on a nickname for her.
AN EasyJet pilot was suspended after his packed holiday jet flew too close to a mountain and was just seconds away from disaster.
Captain Paul Elsworth was grounded following the cockpit drama as the plane descended towards the Red Sea resort of Hurghada in Egypt.
An EasyJet pilot has been suspended after almost colliding into a mountain (stock)Credit: Getty
The Ground Proximity Warning System in the cockpit was triggered and dramatically sounded an impending crash warning.
The alert rang out ‘pull up, terrain, terrain, pull up, pull up, terrain ahead, pull up’ and a dramatic last-gasp manoeuvre – pulling on the joystick to level off the plane – saved up to 190 passengers and crew on-board.
The GPWS alert is recognised as a last resort to prevent a controlled flight into terrain.
The Airbus A320 flew over the mountain range at an altitude of just 3,100ft.
The peak of the mountain near the plane was just 771ft away from the twin-jet aircraft at an altitude of 2,329ft.
Pilots normally clear the mountain range at around 6,000ft, showing just how low the plane had flown.
Sources revealed that the jet had been descending at 4,928ft per minute, which has been dubbed “ridiculously unsafe,” before the GPWS sounded and it levelled out.
The aircraft, which had taken off from Manchester, should have been travelling slower and with a shallower rate of descent, experts said.
An official investigation into the February 2 drama of Flight EZY2251 will include details of how Capt Elsworth reported the safety scare.
The Sun understands the 61-year-old pilot registered the incident the following day – February 3 – before he was due to leave the crew hotel and head to Hurghada airport, ready to pilot the plane back to Manchester.
But EasyJet officials escalated the incident within minutes – recognising the severity of the cockpit drama.
No blame has yet been apportioned for the harrowing incident.
However, in line with protocol, bosses immediately banned Capt Elsworth, who lives in Cheshire, from flying the plane back to the UK.
A source said: “Within moments of the flight drama being raised, officials stepped in and Paul Elsworth was forbidden from piloting the plane. Another flight crew brought the jet home.
“The pilot will be asked detailed questions. The GPWS only sounds when a plane is heading into terrain – in this instance a mountain.
“Passengers on-board are understood to have been oblivious to the scare, and unaware of just how close they came to the mountain range as the plane descended into Egypt.”
After being stood down, Capt Elsworth was flown back to Manchester as a passenger, seated in the cabin.
Once back in the UK, the experienced flyer was officially suspended while investigations continue.
Despite the senior pilot being banned, the same plane—registered G-UZHA—flew back to the UK, and the cockpit voice recorder was overridden, The Sun understands.
Capt Elsworth’s account, and responses from the First Officer who was sat alongside him, will help investigators.
Capt Elsworth made headlines in 2016 when his son Luke became the youngest professional pilot at just 19 after following in his father’s footsteps at EasyJet.
The proud dad said at the time: “Luke has worked really hard. I have as much confidence in Luke flying as I have in myself—and I’ve been doing this for 32 years.” Luke now flies for British Airways.
Last night the suspended pilot advised it would be inappropriate for him to comment while there is an ongoing investigation.
The Civil Aviation Authority is waiting to review how the incident is investigated by EasyJet bosses – including how the airline ‘manages their risk’.
